The Color of Psychosis
by The Quiller
Summary: /Sometimes, you must be cruel only to be kind./ Hitsugaya Toushiro's death is only the beginning of a war that will tear apart the very foundations of Soul Society.
1. prologue: white

_**JANUARY 17, 2012**: Note that, due to recent developments in the manga, this story is now AU from the moment Ichigo defeats Ginjo. Assume for this story's purposes that the Vizards have not returned to their previous captain assignments, and that Ichigo did not revisit soul society right after killing Ginjo._

. . .

∙** the **∙ **color** ∙** of **∙** psychosis** ∙**  
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prologue

. . .

_'Blow, blow, thou winter wind, __thou art not so unkind_

_as man's ingratitude__'_

. . .

She has never been scared of him. _'Cold,'_ the villagers in Rukongai whisper along with many words less kind as they turn their faces away, but when she looks across the river at the white-haired little boy sitting all by himself, she only thinks, _'lonely.'_

It doesn't matter what the other kids say. They can't see because they never bother to look. She has always seen the gentleness underneath his brittle exterior. Even years and years later, when she catches fearful rumors of a prodigy with eyes colder than any child's ever ought to be, she only frowns at their petty jealousy. _'Like ice,'_ they whisper, thinking of sharp edges and aloof competence. _'Like snow,'_ she thinks, as she scrubs her hand through his fluffy white hair and he grudgingly lets her because he is really kinder than anyone. She smiles a secret smile because no one else knows about the boy before the captain like she does, about watermelon seeds and spinning tops and scraped knees and starry skies. He will always be _Shiro-chan_ to her.

Like everything else she has ever believed in, Aizen takes her once unshakeable faith in Hitsugaya and dashes it to pieces at her feet. _Shiro-chan_ is the last pillar of truth in her world untainted by Aizen's poison; she wraps herself in memories of a boy with cold eyes and a warm heart who would never, ever hurt her to keep out the memories of a man with warm eyes and a cold heart who had broken her.

Aizen tears that comfort away from her as he forces her to see the truth behind her _Shiro-chan_, one that she has not seen because she has never truly bothered to look.

She has taken him for granted for too long.

'_My blade is full of hate!'_

In the end, captains do not become captains for their kind hearts or their brilliant minds. They become captains because they are the deadliest weapons in Soul Society's arsenal. The white cloak is a symbol of fear as much as it is a symbol of power.

Shiro_-_chan is cloaked in white.

Understanding comes too late to save her. She chokes under the crushing spirit force and the monstrous killing intent pouring off Hitsugaya, and horror blooms in heart. She has never seen him like this. This is not the boy from Rukongai. This is not the little brother she once teased and snuggled to her heart's content. This is hate and ice and death and everything else he has never let her see. His eyes blaze _white_ with wrath. She looks into them and doesn't think of watermelon seeds or spinning tops or scraped knees or starry skies. She only thinks _'cold'_ as his bankai pierces her heart, so cold that it burns. Too late, she learns how to fear. There isn't a single shred of Shiro-chan in Hitsugaya's broken eyes.

The aftermath is filled with silence and tears.

The shattered pieces of what was once absolute and unbreakable litter the distance between them now. She knows the truth behind Aizen's illusions, of course, but knowing and _knowing_ are very different things. As long as her heart still remembers the cold blade cutting through her like betrayal, she cannot forgive his violation of their sacred childhood trust. Now, she can see all the fury and force of a winter blizzard lingering in the edges of his gaze and hear the thundering roar of the dragon echoing in his footsteps. Suddenly, she realizes just how much he has changed, how aloofly he stands and how dispassionately he gives orders, all the little mannerisms she once found so endearing coldly excised with a captain's discipline. His eyes are so much older, so much colder than she remembers. He is a stranger wearing Shiro-chan's face.

'_Hitsugaya-taicho,'_ she calls him now and flinches away from his reaching hands before she can stop herself from thinking, _'how many have those hands destroyed?'_ She keeps her head bowed now, because she can't bear to see the look on his face.

Wordlessly, he understands everything she doesn't say, and he lets her go. She needs unlearn the fear that has been carved into her heart before she can heal.

It takes her a long, long time to pick up all the broken pieces of herself and glue them together with the love of all her friends. Slowly, she relearns how to smile at Renji's gruff kindness and Kira's awkward thoughtfulness. Slowly, she lets Rangiku's sisterly teasing teach her how to laugh again. Tobiume's soft whispers grow louder by the day, restoring her self-confidence and strength one inch at a time. Healing is a long process, but she has as many years or decades as she needs to get back on her feet.

It isn't until one day, when she looks across an empty courtyard at the white-haired, not-so-little-anymore captain watching over her solemnly from a distance, always a distance, that she realizes she has truly healed. Her heart whispers _'lonely'_ instead of _'cold'_.

And she finally reaches out, ready to reclaim the last, shimmering white shard of her past. She wants it back, all of it, the memories of watermelon seeds and spinning tops and scraped knees and starry skies.

But she has taken him for granted for too long.

When she reaches, he is not there.

Too late, she learns. Too late, some things, once lost, are lost forever.

He will never be her Shiro-chan again.

. . .

_Author's note:_

_Hope you enjoyed the teaser to the fic. The next chapter will jump straight into the action, I promise! Hitsugaya-centric, obviously, but many other characters will have major roles. For you rabid shippers, I'll say this now: there will be very little explicit romance of ANY pairing, but there WILL be subtext, and you can bet that character relationships WILL be explored and deconstructed. I like making my characters suffer and bleed._

_Just looking at my plot outline, this is going to be the biggest project I've ever written. Prepare for a trip to the darker side of the Bleach universe, angst and fridge horror galore._

_Buckle in for a long ride!_

_I'm also looking for a beta reader, so if anyone's up for it, please drop me a PM._


	2. part i: sunset

. . .

∙** the **∙ **color** ∙** of **∙** psychosis** ∙**  
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part ( i )

. . .

"_Matsumoto."_

She recognized the voice even before she opened her eyes. No one else could cram quite so much endearingly repressed frustration into a single word the way Hitsugaya did. Cracking one stormy grey eye open, she looked upwards and sure enough, her captain's calm teal eyes gazed back down from above her. His arms were crossed and his lips were set in a frown that she recognized as his default expression. _'As predictable as sunrise,'_ she thought warmly.

"Mm, Taicho? Is it morning already?" she asked, stretching along the couch like a cat in a way that would have any red-blooded male ogling.

Her captain being the exception, of course. His gaze remained flatly not amused as he deadpanned, "It's two in the afternoon."

_"Eh?_ Already? Why didn't you wake me sooner?"

"The administrative office is not your room," he reprimanded before taking his hands out of his sleeves. His fingers were smudged with ink, and Matsumoto hid a smile at the inherent childishness in having ink-stained fingers like an Academy student. He kept talking, blissfully unaware of his lieutenant's whimsical musings, "I need to head out, so watch the office. Takezoe should be reporting back with the patrols in an hour."

She mentally groaned. Locked up in this stuffy office for hours with nothing but deskwork for amusement? No wonder her captain had let her sleep in – if he forced her to work all morning, she'd have no qualms against skipping out the moment he was out of earshot. As it was though, he had spent a morning doing paperwork while she napped, and she couldn't quite ditch out for the rest of the day in good conscience. Still, she made an obligatory futile plea for appearance's sake, "But Taicho, I promised Kira and Shuuhei I'd go drinking with them. Think of how disappointed they'll be!"

Hitsugaya coolly raised an eyebrow at her.

"And remind me why I'm supposed to encourage officer truancy again?"

She gave him her best pouty eyes.

To her surprise, he sighed and closed his eyes for a moment, and then relented, "You can go as soon as Takezoe reports in. There's nothing else on the today's agenda anyway." His eyes snapped open again when a strand of Matsumoto's hair brushed against his cheek moments before she pressed her forehead to his, her expression set in a serious look of concern.

"Matsumoto. What are you _doing_?"

"You don't feel sick, do you?" she murmured, pulling apart and pressing a hand to her own forehead, and then to his with a puzzled look on her face. "You don't look sick either. Are you sure you don't want to check in with the Fourth just in case, Taicho?"

"What–"

"You're clearly not feeling yourself," she nodded sagaciously with a knowing look on her face. "You're letting me sleep in _and_ leave early! You're never this nice!"

She watched his face cycle through several expressions as he tried to respond appropriately. The familiar twitch of his eye and throb of that forehead vein as he visibly reined in an angry outburst, the slight jump of the corner of his mouth with dry amusement. Then a strange, unreadable look flickered in his eyes briefly before he settled on looking irritated. It was strange, because Matsumoto had learned to read her captain's expression like an open book, as every lieutenant should, and it was rare that his eyes was unreadable to her.

"Do you _want_ to stay in the office?" he growled.

"Nope, not at all!" she said far too cheerily for a lieutenant talking about skipping work. She was still curious about his uncharacteristic leniency today though. "Still Taicho, why?"

His irritation grudgingly melted away into that strange inscrutable expression again. He shrugged noncommittally and answered in an unaffected, but sincere tone, "You're over your workload quota for squad training and patrols this quarter, no matter how much you slack off on paperwork. I know you've been helping sort out some non-military issues too. I...it's appreciated. You deserve an occasional break."

And he was just full of surprises today.

Matsumoto was genuinely touched. Hitsugaya rarely ever said so many words at once, and took the time to find words of praise even more rarely. Lips curling into a warm smile, she murmured, "Taicho..."

He straightened his captain's cloak and gruffly rebuffed her in a manner she recognized as his own brand of muted embarrassment, "Make it count. I won't always be there to pick up your slack." He turned to leave, but she called out before he could.

"Taicho, thank you."

He paused for just a moment with his back turned to her, as if he was about to say something else, but in the end, he only nodded briskly in acknowledgement and disappeared in a silent shunpo.

. . .

Unohana knew who her visitor was before she heard even his soft voice at her door.

"Unohana-taicho," he greeted stiffly, his voice always older and deeper than his face would suggest. It was rare for him to refer to her by her formal rank, but the fact that he chose to do so today told her more than a much longer greeting ever could.

"Hitsugaya-taicho," she acknowledged with a mild incline of her head, and the door slid open to reveal exactly who she expected. This routine between healer and patient had long since passed into almost autonomous habit. He took a seat on the stool in the middle and shrugged off his captain's cloak as she went about setting up the testing apparatus. He looked much younger without the imposing white garment, the solid black of his shihakusho making his stunning eyes leap out in sharp relief, but Unohana easily saw past the illusion. No child would ever have quite so many scars from nigh fatal wounds underneath that uniform.

The next fifteen minutes passed uneventfully as she asked the typical questions about his health and he replied to each in turn with his succinct, exact manner, with an occasional break as she measured his blood pressure, heart rate, and spirit force. As she worked though, Unohana noticed the swirls of frost drafting along the ground and tasted the ghost of a snowstorm in the air - his spirit was restless, slipping through the cracks of his iron self-discipline.

It was only near the very end of the examination though, as he settled his captain's cloak back over his shoulders, that he finally spoke on his own accord.

"When this is over, if they..." he began, but stopped himself halfway, his frown deepening. Words didn't come easily to him, especially not in the form of a request. But Unohana knew her patient well enough to understand even so - his eyes conveyed everything that his voice would not.

She didn't offer him a smile as she would have when comforting any other patient. It would only be patronizing under the current circumstances.

Instead, she met his almost painfully bright eyes without hesitation.

"Be at ease, Hitsugaya-taicho. It has always been our duty to heal all wounds, of both the spirit and the flesh. The ability of the soul to recover should never be underestimated," she said evenly.

The steely set of his shoulders softened slightly; she could almost see his moment of weakness – the last one he would ever allow himself – glisten in the corner of his eyes before he blinked it away like a snowflake into the night. It was gone as quickly as it came. He squared his shoulders and bowed, and his bows were always so gravely proper that his parting seemed all the more solemn.

"Thank you," he said. His voice was rough, but didn't tremble.

"There is no need for gratitude, Hitsugaya-taicho. I only wish I could do more," Unohana replied.

The brisk taste of winter left with him. As the door slid shut behind him and his footsteps faded away, the dimming orange-reds of sunset spilled back into every corner of the room, bringing with it both quiet and melancholy. Unohana spent the next few minutes at her desk, meticulously updating her detailed reports on the Tenth Division captain's health. Even if the task was meaningless, appearances must be kept, and if her hand shook at all as she wrote, well, no one was around to see.

A thousand years may have made her spirit unbreakable, but not her heart. She thought of what they have asked of him, of someone who couldn't be called a child only because he had forced himself not to be, and she couldn't help but despise their decision. But it must be done.

'_Do not seek out beauty in battle._

_Do not seek out virtue in death._

_Do not think of your life as your own. If you desire to protect that which must be protected, cut down your foe from behind.'_

Every bright-eyed youth who ever passed under the eaves of the Academy learned that oath by heart, but how many would ever understand the full meaning of those words? Only a thousand years of dealing death and saving life in turn have given her the strength to stand unbowed by their weight. Then she thought of his small back, marked by scars gained in defense of both duty and pride, and his narrow shoulders, not yet grown into the broadness of adulthood, but still stoically refusing to bow under the same weight of that oath. Her heart fragmented quietly to the solitary tinkling of water.

It must be done, but he was so very, very young to have eyes so very, very cold.

If only there was any other way.

She finished the report with the words, _'in perfect health, with no foreseeable future complications'_, and quietly wished they were true.

. . .

Matsumoto was surprised enough to see a familiar bob of a dark hair to drag both Kira and Hisagi out of the bar along with her in pursuit. Catching up was much harder than it looked, with the amount of manhandling required to steer her drunkenly wobbling companions through the lively crowds at this hour of the evening, but Matsumoto had decades of experience on her side. Sure enough, when she finally got within shouting distance, her eyes hadn't been mistaken.

"Hinamori-chan!" she called out over the hubbub, waving at the girl and nearly dislodging poor Kira from his slump over her shoulder.

The said girl turned around immediately and her mouth formed a perfect little 'o' in surprise before her entire face brightened.

"Rangiku-san! Ah, Kira-kun and Hisagi-san too!" she greeted happily as her small frame had no trouble picking her way through the throng.

"Hinamori-fukutaicho," Hisagi mumbled somberly, inclining his head in her general direction while his eyes focused and unfocused. "I didn't know you had a twin."

Matsumoto elbowed him out of the way good-naturedly and monopolized Hinamori's attention once more. "I never thought I'd run into you in _this_ part of town. Don't tell me Renji's corrupted you already!" she said, dropping Kira instead of her sake bottle in order to give Hinamori a glomping hug.

"Abarai-taicho wouldn't do that," the Fifth Division lieutenant laughed as she extricated herself from her blonde counterpart's embrace. "He's spent too long under Kuchiki-taicho to do that sort of thing anymore, I think." Her smile faded a few shades as she wrung her hands and visibly mustered up her courage to ask, "Actually, I was wondering if you knew where...Hitsugaya-kun might be."

Full stop.

'_Hitsugaya-kun_.'

Matsumoto hadn't heard Hinamori call Hitsugaya that in years. It was always '_Hitsugaya-taicho'_ during those strained conversations with averted eyes until they had simply stopped speaking outside of official functions altogether. Time had dragged on and the distance had only increased as they continued their stalemate. The few attempts to force a resolution had ended _very_ badly, to put it mildly. Even Matsumoto had started giving up hope of things ever being right again.

But if Hinamori was willing to make an effort now, after all this time -

Keeping her tone carefully blithe, Matsumoto said, "If Taicho's been secretly bar hopping behind my back all this time, I will be a very happy woman." Hinamori ducked her head in embarrassment and Matsumoto's grin softened before she relented, "If I had to guess though, he'll probably be in the Division headquarters. He's always finishing up extra work in the evenings."

Hinamori bit her lip and a strange, unreadable look flickered in her eyes for a moment before she settled on looking anxious.

"Do you think he's busy then? I was hoping we could talk, but I don't want to be a bother," she said quietly, and with a mental click, Matsumoto realized what that strange look in her eyes was.

Guilt. Hinamori looked guilty, the kind of deep, gut-wrenching guilt that came from hurting people who cared about you. There weren't many things that someone as sweet as Hinamori Momo had to look guilty about, but there was a big one that Matsumoto could think of right off the top of her head. If it was what she thought it was, then this was a realization that had been long overdue in coming, at least on Hinamori's part. Matsumoto's heart swelled as she thought, _'Finally!'_

"Momo," the blonde lieutenant said firmly as she grasped her dark-haired counterpart's hands earnestly, "if there is anyone that Taicho would make time for no matter how busy he is, it's you."

Hinamori's faltering smile strengthened again, and Matsumoto nearly dragged the girl off to her captain then and there before remembering her two completely sloshed drinking buddies. Frowning at Hisagi blearily trying to chat up a wooden post and Kira chuckling at apparently nothing in a corner, Matsumoto decided to fish out both of their wallets and tuck the items safely in her bosom.

"Rangiku-san! You can't do that!" Hinamori chided, but the tweak of a smile on her face took all the bite out of her words.

Matsumoto winked. "Trust me. They'll be thanking me in the morning for making sure nothing happens to these."

"Shouldn't we be more worried about something happening to them instead?" the dark-haired lieutenant asked sensibly as she gave the two men a dubious look, especially as Hisagi swayed at a teetering angle to the ground before miraculously regaining his balance.

"Nope, they're big boys; they can take care of themselves."

Hinamori giggled softly and Matsumoto took a moment to savor how rare it was to see the world go right for once. She had been able to nap until mid-afternoon, her captain had given her the entire evening off as well in his wonderfully gruff, sweet way, she had conned Hisagi into paying again, then she had drank enough to get pleasantly buzzed despite her ridiculous tolerance, and now she had both Kira _and_ Hisagi's wallets. If Hinamori and Hitsugaya could finally end their silly stalemate to boot, then her day would be complete.

A single shunpo left the noisy bar district behind them as the silvery tranquility of Seireitei settled back over them. With the warm glow of nightlife wearing off, the two female lieutenants lapsed into quieter conversation about meaningless topics as they walked towards the Tenth Division buildings. Hinamori grew noticeably less talkative and more anxious until, just before they turned the final corner in front of the administrative building, she stopped walking altogether.

"Ne, Rangiku-san. Do you think..." The girl she struggled with herself for a moment before asking in the tiniest voice, "Do you think Hitsugaya-kun is still mad at me?"

The question had obviously been weighing heavily on her mind all evening. She looked so small and sad for a moment that Matsumoto decided another therapeutic hug was the order of the day and wasted no time in burying the girl in her ample bosom.

Once upon a time, she had bitterly resented this girl. Any lieutenant would have resented seeing the unspoken hurt in her captain's eyes, especially if he was training himself bloody in some twisted sense of self-atonement. It had grated painfully to see Hinamori distancing herself from her living, breathing childhood friend, one who would carve out his own heart to keep her safe and happy. Rangiku knew she would have carved out her own heart just to see Gin smile one more time.

Yet, at the same time, the poor girl had been so broken by how much Aizen had put her through. No one in the war had suffered more. Matsumoto knew the pain of love and betrayal very well, but while Gin had, in the very end, returned to her, Aizen had never spared Hinamori a backwards glance. His games had been designed specifically to break her - that she was still here was already a testament to the strength of her will and the strength of her friendships.

With that thought in mind, Matsumoto had relinquished her bitterness and laid the blame at Aizen's feet alone, and there the blame would stay. Taicho had anchored her through her own heartbreak with quiet words and unshakeable resolve. The least she could do was return the favor and help anchor Hinamori through hers, because the sooner Hinamori healed, the sooner her captain would forgive himself.

Thank god it was finally paying off.

"He was never mad to begin with," Matsumoto said without a shadow of doubt.

She could feel Hinamori take a shuddering breath in her embrace, as a decade of hurt and healing finally sank in.

"How? After all this time, everything I did, everything I _said-_," Hinamori whispered.

"He's never blamed you for that, not even once," Matsumoto said. She wondered how many times Hinamori had let those doubts stop her from going through with facing Hitsugaya. If the blonde lieutenant hadn't been here, would Hinamori have turned back even when she was so close?

"But ten years is a long time to wait, even for shinigami," Matsumoto added quietly, because even if the blame laid at Aizen's feet, her Taicho had still spent years blaming himself. Hinamori had no idea how much Hitsugaya put himself through. "He gave you as much distance as you wanted, so it's up to you to make that first step."

"I know. I missed him. I was just...so scared for so long I didn't even realize. I want _Shiro-chan_ back," Hinamori said.

"I think Taicho has been waiting a long time to hear you say that," Matsumoto said, "so make sure to tell him that yourself."

She gave Hinamori a small squeeze for luck, and the girl squeezed back briefly before pulling away, her face smiling tentatively once more.

"Thank you, Rangiku-san."

Matsumoto just grinned her what-are-we-still-waiting-for grin. She couldn't wait to see the look on Hitsugaya's face. _'Make it count_,' he had told her as he gave her a break from work, and she had definitely made the most of it. She would be able hold this one over his head for _ages_ to get more days off. It just went to show that occasionally, a good deed was rewarded with a good return after all. It was _past _time for things to be set right.

They turned the corner together.

And suddenly, everything she had said and done counted for nothing at all, because the world went wrong in a way that couldn't ever be made right again.

. . .

And she thought afterwards, _'He never said goodbye.'_

The first sound Matsumoto heard was the painful crack of Hinamori's knees crashing down on the floorboards.

Her gaze dragged its way across the walkway to the base of the building, where a streak of something dark neatly bisected the immaculate white wall. Her eyes followed the streak upwards on their own accord. It fanned and frayed into a wider and wider brushstroke of something thick and wet, like it had been painted haphazardly against the white wall by a careless artist.

Then she saw the hem of a captain's cloak, lined with a glimmer of dark emerald silk where it wasn't stained by black paint, and her heartbeat picked up speed. She looked up further and saw hands, ink-stained hands that bore the calluses of both the sword and the brush, and a lone droplet of what she now numbly realized was blood fell from his fingertips like a tear. Skilled hands, somehow too delicate to be an adult's, but too battle-worn to be a child's.

And she thought, _'I know those hands.'_

She looked up even further still and her breath caught in her throat. The four-pointed star on the hilt guard, the long blade struck cleanly through his heart, somehow still glowing with the purity of ice despite the blood dripping sluggishly along its edge.

And she thought, _'I know that blade'_, but her eyes completed their journey despite the deafening thunder of her own heartbeat in her ears.

Distantly, she heard the sound of a sake bottle slipping from her numb fingers to clunk against the wooden floor, spilling its contents as it rolled to a stop.

She saw half-open eyes. Tiny droplets of blood clung to his pale eyelashes, but his eyes caught the moonlight like pools of glass, and there was no mistaking that particular shade of turquoise. His lips were soft and serene instead of pulled into his usual scowl. Another trickle of blood rolled slowly along the familiar curve of his cheek down to his chin. And his hair had somehow escaped the ruinous splatter of red entirely, ruffling softly in the wind like freshly fallen snow.

The world beneath her feet dropped away with a dizzying lurch.

"Shiro-chan?" Matsumoto heard Hinamori ask, her voice trembling like a flower clinging to a precipice in a storm.

Somewhere in the back of her head, the conscientious, dutiful lieutenant part of her calmly pointed out that there were procedures for this kind of thing, especially after the whole Aizen fiasco, and there were people she needed to alert and things she had to do so that a proper investigation could get underway. Only, she rarely listened to that part of her anyway, because Hitsugaya always had things sorted out. He was more lenient towards her than any other captain was towards their lieutenant, and she had barely done a thing the last time a captain was murdered because Hitsugaya had shouldered almost all of the administrative work on his own. But not this time. This time, she couldn't count on her captain to be there for her. This time, she didn't have the benefit of his stoic composure, or his cool efficiency as he got the situation under control, because - because -

And she thought _'This can't be happening. You can't do this to Hinamori, Taicho'_ as black realization bloomed in her heart of hearts,

But her lips whispered, "This can't be happening. You can't do this to me, Taicho."

"_Shiro-chan_," Hinamori begged, her hands reaching out even though he was too far away.

If only the girl had been just a few hours earlier. If only Hinamori had gone straight to him instead of wandering around looking for moral support. Matsumoto's heart cracked. If only he hadn't given her the evening off. If only she had stayed instead of abandoning him for something as trivial as a drinking spree. If only she had been there to watch his back like a responsible lieutenant would have.

If only, if only, too little, too late.

Someone was screaming, but she wasn't sure who. Somehow, her mind had trapped itself in a closed loop that just kept going round and round and round, and she couldn't think of anything else.

And she thought, _'He didn't say goodbye.'_

Except, maybe he did and she just hadn't noticed. Maybe that's how it always went, maybe she never noticed, maybe she lost them because she always slipped into the same trap and started taking things for granted, and never recognized their farewells for what they were.

What had her captain said to her last?

_Make it count._

_I won't always be there._

. . .

_Author's note:_

_And the ball is rolling. Hope that wasn't too maudlin for all of you; I know I tend to get carried away when writing character deaths._

_Not that I'd ever really kill off Shiro-chan in the first chapter. Right?_

_ Speaking of which, I am still looking for a good Beta-reader who can rein me in when I start getting too dramatic, so if there's anyone out there, help would be appreciated!_


	3. part ii: crystal

. . .

∙** the **∙ **color** ∙** of **∙** psychosis** ∙**  
><strong>

part ( ii )

. . .

Matsumoto Rangiku held it together. She did not faint. She did not cry. She was a grown woman, a lieutenant of the Gotei 13, and she would not break down like a little girl.

She held herself steady as they took down his body. Unlike Hinamori, she couldn't afford to clutch at his blood-stained robes and cry denial to the skies until they pried her away from his side. Instead, Matsumoto forced herself to breathe evenly and think shallowly, keeping her grief in check so that she could give orders. The compound needed to be made off-limits. The seated officers needed to be informed. Soifon-taicho needed her to give a coherent report of any relevant information she could think of – when she had seen him last, which squad members were in the area at the time, and whether or not Hitsugaya-taicho had ever behaved out of character or spoken to anyone out of the ordinary in the last couple of days.

She held onto her composure with a white-knuckled death grip. With Hitsugaya gone, who would hold the division together if she fell apart?

Still, there was no hiding the anguish in her eyes as they took his body away. She almost screamed then, as they lifted him deferentially onto a stretcher to be carried to the Fourth. Nearly burst into tears and fell to her knees, begging them not to take him away. But she didn't. In the end, Matsumoto only tightened her grip on Haineko, tight enough to hear the bones of her hand pop, and bit down on her scream until she tasted blood.

News spread like wildfire and soon the whole squad was up in arms. A captain was the core of a division, and the Tenth just had its heart ripped out brutally without any warning. They were angry, grieving and lost without their commander. She spent the rest of the night running damage control, giving them a beacon to follow and serving as a living reminder that they were still a division bound together by battles and blood. It would insult their captain's memory if they fell apart now.

Hours and hours of crisis control later, Matsumoto Rangiku still refused to crack. She held it together until their tears were shed and their grief abated, and she could finally retire to her rooms. She held it together as she slid the door of her quarters shut behind her, leaving her alone in the quiet darkness.

Then she heard a soft tinkle as something fell and shattered.

Her gaze flickered to the crystal chrysanthemum centerpiece on her tea table.

Quite possibly the most beautiful thing she owned, the flower had taken weeks and weeks of wheedling before her captain had grudgingly granted her plea for a pretty ice-sculpture. He rarely gave her anything – petty gifts were superfluous between a commanding officer and his subordinate, after all. And if they were anything more than just that, then that was a bond of unspoken, unshakeable trust that didn't need to be acknowledged with words and trinkets anyway.

Still, she treasured the few things her gruff little captain did give her. Like everything Hitsugaya Toushiro ever put effort into, the ice blossom was a work of art; each of the chrysanthemum's petals had been meticulously sculpted one by one, blooming elegantly as they caught the moonlight on a hundred glittering facets. It stayed pristine in even the hottest summers.

Now it was dying. The spirit force that had held it together and guarded it from harm was gone. It was melting, and its petals withering, falling away, even as she cupped it in her hands in a vain attempt to hold onto it for just a little longer.

The magic was gone.

And she thought, _'Gin never left me any keepsakes either.'_

Only then, with no one around to see and no one left to be brave for, did Rangiku let herself break into gasping, ugly sobs, trembling as she knelt over the withering flower in her hands. When morning came, her face was still wet with tears, even though the last traces of ice cupped in her hands had finally turned into water and slipped away.

. . .

On some days, Renji wondered if he should just screw being a captain and retire to some distant corner of Rukongai where no one could ever find him again. He didn't even know if captains _could_ retire, barring incapacitation.

Today was one of those days.

Between Matsumoto and Hinamori, he had more heartbroken females on his hands than he knew what to do with. Then there was the whole investigation mess that had everyone and their mother on the suspect list because, quite frankly, the evidence they had made no sense. How the hell had someone managed to kill a captain without anyone else noticing? The sick fuck responsible had probably purposefully set up the murder to look almost exactly like Aizen's too, just to make people panic and start slinging crazy accusations everywhere.

No wonder so many of the other captains were insane. Renji let his head thud against the wall behind him and wondered if anyone would fault him for passing out for a few hours in his office just to get away from the madness.

Not that he could even get into his office at the moment. Abarai Renji was currently standing miserably outside, trying to muster up the courage to go inside, which was kind of pathetic no matter how he looked at it.

The problem was his good hearing. He could hear the soft sounds of a brush and ink as someone inside did the paperwork. Only, every so often, he would hear the quiet _'drip'_ as tears fell onto paper, a half-strangled sob, and then a crumple of paper as the person writing threw the now-ruined form into the trashcan.

He wished Hinamori had taken his advice and stayed home. He wished he hadn't been the one assigned to sort through Hitsugaya-taicho's possessions. He wished he hadn't found the letter that was palpably heavy with guilt in folds of his robes, because then he wouldn't have to decide if it would be better to hand it over to the investigation team, to give the letter to Hinamori, or to simply burn it before anyone had a chance to open it. Reading it wasn't an option – commanding officer or not, Abarai Renji was a loyal friend. Besides, it would be a violation of trust if he read Hitsugaya-taicho's last words while fully aware that they were meant for someone else's eyes.

"Argh, don't overthink it, you idiot," he chided himself and threw the office door open before he could change his mind.

"A-Abarai-taicho!" Hinamori jumped to attention behind her desk, hastily wiping her tears on her sleeve. She wasn't fooling anyone though; her eyes were swollen, her clothes were a mess, and her voice sounded like she had scraped it raw with sandpaper. She probably knew it too, considering how quickly she averted her gaze and croaked, "I'm sorry - I made a mess of the forms. I have to redo them."

"Don't worry about it. I told you to take the day off, didn't I?" Renji said. He regretted the words immediately when she flinched. Comforting girls wasn't his forte – he'd have to blunder through it and hope for the best. It was now or never.

The red-haired captain cleared his throat awkwardly and said, "Anyway, the men found something this morning that I thought you should have."

He took the letter out of the folds of his robe and saw Hinamori's eyes visibly widen as she recognized her name written across the front in familiar handwriting. Renji pretended not to see the tremble in her lip or the unsteadiness of her hands as she reached out to accept it. For a while, she just stood there, her gaze fixed on the letter in her hand with a kind of desperate emotion that Renji couldn't decipher. It became clear that no response was forthcoming.

"I'll – uh – I'll step outside if you want to read it alone," Renji muttered lamely. Hinamori gave him a tiny nod and he beat a hasty retreat.

As he slid the door to the office open again, he nearly bowled straight into Kira. The blonde lieutenant opened his mouth to utter his surprise, but Renji clamped a hand over his mouth and dragged them both out of view before Kira make a sound.

"Abarai? Is something the matter?" Kira asked, confused by the unprovoked attack. Belatedly, Renji noticed a now crumpled bouquet on Kira's hands. He also noticed how bedraggled the acting-captain of the Third Division looked, especially because Kira had woken up in an alley, hung-over and bereft of his wallet, before immediately being swept into the chaos that followed Hitsugaya's murder. Where he had even found the time to pick up a bouquet of flowers, Renji had no idea.

"Now's not a good time to visit Hinamori, Kira," Renji explained.

Kira looked down at the bouquet in his hands and back up at his red-haired friend. Almost contritely, he said, "I just thought, well, maybe, some flowers would cheer Hinamori-kun up a little?" The words came out sounding more like a question than a fact, and there was an implied apology in Kira's words, though he looked confused as to what he had done wrong.

"That's fine, no, actually, that's great. But she's reading a letter from Hitsugaya right now, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't want either of us in there right now," Renji said.

"Oh," Kira said. That explained everything. The two friends stood outside the Fifth Division office for a moment of awkward silence as they contemplated the third member of their trio on the other side of the door. Kira shifted his weight from foot to foot as Renji crossed his arms and directed his gaze at the sky, stubbornly trying not to think what might have been written in that letter. For some reason, a feeling of unease was spreading through Renji's stomach like spoiled milk, and he found himself more and more worried as he heard the shuffle of paper inside the office.

Then, quite softly, he heard Hinamori's plaintive voice: "_Shiro-chan, you liar._"

There was an explosion of lieutenant-class spirit pressure that blasted the Fifth Division office door right out of its frame.

Only his own captain-class reflexes let him catch Hinamori mid-shunpo as she flash-stepped out of the office, her face twisted in grief and agony. _'What the hell was written in there?'_ Renji wondered in bewilderment as Hinamori thrashed in his arms.

"You liar!" Hinamori repeated, her eyes darting from side to side as if she were looking for someone. Her voice steadily increased from a cry to a scream as she asked the empty air, "Do you just want me out of the way? How could you?_ Tell me why, Shiro-chan!_"

"Hinamori, stop, calm down." Renji fought to keep her restrained. All he got for his trouble was another fist to the face. Patience running thin, he raised his voice, shouting to get through to her, "He's not _here_, Hinamori! Get a hold of yourself – _urk_ – goddammit!"

She had elbowed him in the throat and ignored his words completely. Holy shit, for someone so small, she was freakishly strong.

"I won't be fooled, not again! Do you think I'll fall for the same trap twice? Did you think you can lie to me? Come out, _come out now!_ _Hitsugaya Toushiro!_" she screamed. Renji had never heard her use Hitsugaya's full name before. Her gaze held a not-quite-sane light as tears streamed down her face unchecked, and she was straining against him so fiercely that he was seriously scared she would snap a bone, more likely one of her own than one of his.

"Hinamori-kun, please! No one is hiding anything from you!" Kira shouted over her cries.

Nothing either of them said was getting through to her. Renji actually saw bruises forming around her wrists where he was holding them. That was when he decided it was time to throw all semblance of tact out the window.

"He's dead! Hitsugaya is dead, Hinamori!" he bellowed at the top of his lungs.

Everyone in Fifth Division compound probably heard their captain's roar and stopped in their tracks.

Hinamori looked as if someone had just slapped her.

_'Okay, guilt kicking in about...now,' _Renji thought. Still, it had done the job; the fight had bled right out of Hinamori, and she collapsed slowly on her knees as her wrath-born strength dwindled away.

"No," she whispered. "He can't be." She looked away from him, searching the distance with a look of utterly broken hope in her eyes as she choked, "I...I don't even care anymore, Shiro-chan. Please _come out_. I'll forgive anything, _everything_. J-just please...not like this. Not like Aizen-taicho. Please...please don't leave me behind."

Then she dissolved, shaking as she cried quietly into the front of his robes, and Renji didn't know what he could do except hold onto her, feeling like the worst friend in the world. Swallowing the lump in his throat, he remembered that he was supposed to be a captain, and that meant he was supposed to be composed and in control of the situation. Goddammit, how had Byakuya made it look so easy? Shifting Hinamori's weight awkwardly, Renji turned to give Kira an imploring look.

"Could you get her to the Fourth? Unohana...Unohana-taicho will know what to do," Renji said. That's right - foist off the over-emotional female on someone who actually knew how to deal with one. Basically, anyone other than himself. Maybe it was the coward's way out, but it was the best Renji could come up with in a pinch.

Kira nodded mutely, and Renji gingerly transferred the crying girl over to his arms. He heard the blonde lieutenant murmur something softly to Hinamori before the two disappeared with a gentle shunpo.

Rubbing his throat, Renji stepped over the fallen door into his office. Lying innocently in the middle of the floor was the letter, barely two pages of Hitsugaya-taicho's neat, perfectly legible handwriting. How had a few paragraphs caused that much damage?

He picked it up and started reading with a twinge of guilt. As Hinamori's commanding officer, it was his duty to look after her welfare, both mental and physical, and he had to read the letter to figure out what was wrong. How bad could it be? At worst, Renji rationalized, he might be reading a posthumous love confession or something equally private. He offered a small prayer of apology to Hitsugaya-taicho's ghost and turned the first page.

It wasn't a love confession.

It was formal and somewhat detached, which wasn't quite like a letter that was supposedly addressed to a close friend. Then again, Hitsugaya Toushiro had always been somewhat cold and standoffish, so it was almost expected. The content, however, was _not_ what he expected at all. By time Renji finished the letter, his hands were trembling.

It said:

'_Hinamori,_

_If you are reading this, then I am probably no longer alive._

_I know there are a lot of things that I haven't been able to say to you, and I know it's too late to say them now. So I will say just this. For everything I've done, I am sorry. Until now, I have never spoken to you of my suspicions and doubts. I didn't want you to get involved. For not trusting you, I am sorry._

_Forgive me. I still don't want you to get involved. However, if my worst fears are true, there may not be any other choice._

_I can't protect you anymore. So I will tell you what I can, so that you can at least protect yourself._

_There have been stirrings in both the Living World and Rukongai: strange movements of souls, minor uprisings, sporadic reports that don't make sense. Hueco Mundo has gone silent. There are signs that a greater power is moving behind the scenes, coordinating alliances in both Hueco Mundo and Rukongai to amass an army of which the likes has never before been seen. They plan to overthrow the Shinigami, Seireitei, and maybe even the Soul King himself._

_I have been searching for the person behind this. Every clue and confession has pointed to one man. I have reconsidered every possibility, revalidated every piece of evidence, but I can draw no other conclusion._

_The man behind this is Kurosaki Ichigo._

_Tonight, I have arranged to meet him in person. I will give him one chance to explain himself or defend his innocence. If we cannot come to an accord, I am prepared to cross blades. However, if I should die, I would make one last request of you, Momo._

_Leave Seireitei. This is not your war. Take Granny with you and flee until you pass the outer reaches of Rukongai. Don't look back. Kurosaki is not an enemy you can hope to defeat._

_This is my final wish. Not as the captain of the Tenth Division, but as the friend you once considered me to be._

_Sincerely,_

_Hitsugaya Toushiro'_

The letter fell from Renji's nerveless fingers and fluttered slowly to the floor.

. . .

"Someone must have messed with it beforehand! There's no way Ichigo would do this!" Renji shouted.

"But this is indeed Hitsugaya-taicho's handwriting. His spirit presence still lingers on the ink. That, at least, cannot be forged," spoke Ukitake sadly. His eyes were dark with grief as they scanned over the letter, and the sleep deprivation in conjunction with the anguish in his kind heart had hardly done his health any favors.

"A single letter has no significance no matter by whose hand it was written," Kuchiki Byakuya said.

"It is hardly just a single letter. We found months' worth of notes on his investigation in his quarters. Everything from compiled statistics to eyewitness accounts to notable disappearances," Soifon said with narrowed eyes. "I found it odd how someone as thorough as Hitsugaya Toushiro would actively avoid naming the suspect he was investigating. This explains it quite neatly."

"Yare, yare, let's not jump to conclusions too fast now," Kyoraku Shunsui murmured.

"We know for certain that Hitsugaya-taicho was found last night, suspended in front of the Tenth Division's administrative office by his own zanpakuto. The time of death occurred between 1800 hours, when the squads were dismissed, and 2100 hours, when the body was discovered. All captains and lieutenants were accounted for during that period of time," acting-captain Hisagi Shuuhei recapped. For a man nursing a splitting hangover followed by a sleepless night, he conducted himself admirably well.

"But how?" asked Ukitake, his kind face pale and drawn. "Surely, someone would have sensed _something_."

"I found no injuries besides the most obvious. The attack was most likely unexpected and instantaneous," Unohana said quietly. There was a definite shadow of weariness around the corners of her eyes. She had been the busiest of all the captains; the lingering scent of blood and antiseptic still clung to her. Her face was schooled into an expression of serenity, however, and it masked any sorrow she may have felt.

"Only a complete and utter imbecile would be taken by surprise with his own sword," Kurotsuchi Mayuri spat, clearly irritated that he had been pulled away from a highly important experiment.

"I do not think the original attack was made with Hyorinmaru," Unohana clarified, "I believe that the attacker used his own blade, and made the same wound with Hyorinmaru after the fact. There were signs that Hitsugaya-taicho was pierced twice – once from behind, and once from the front. The first blow may have been struck with a different blade."

"It does not matter which sword was used. Only the skill with which the blow was struck." Komamura finally spoke, as solemn and serious as ever.

"Now that's a scary thought. Someone who can pull one over Hitsugaya-kun," Kyoraku said.

Kenpachi growled, "So he got back-stabbed by some random idiot? And I thought the brat would have at least put up a decent fight. What a fucking lame way to go."

"A captain will not fall to an unskilled opponent, dishonorable tactics or no," Byakuya gave his level judgment of the situation. His eyes closed momentarily, though it was impossible to tell if he was annoyed or worried by the proceedings. Any anger he might have felt was swept beneath a mask of perfect calm. Then, to Renji's surprise, his former captain frowned and added, "However, I do not think Kurosaki Ichigo is responsible for this."

"The kid's too damn honest to pull something like this," Kenpachi agreed. "Besides, he's not some kind of pansy who has to sneak around behind our backs. If he's got a problem with one of us, he'll come bustin' through the front gate."

"A fair assessment of Kurosaki Ichigo at fifteen, perhaps. But he is no longer a child. Ten years is more than enough time to twist a mortal's personality beyond recognition," Komamura pointed out.

"What do you think, Juushiro? Think Rukia-chan can shed some light on this?" Kyoraku asked Ukitake.

"As if that child could be trusted to be objective. Clearly the red-headed baboon has already thoroughly demonstrated how _objective_ their opinions will be," Kurotsuchi drawled.

Renji bit back a snarl as his hand twitched instinctively towards Zabimaru, but Ukitake cut in gently before it could come to blows, "If possible, I'd like to keep Rukia-kun as uninvolved as possible. She has not spoken to him in years; the information she can offer may no longer be relevant. I must admit...I am personally reluctant to suspect Kurosaki Ichigo of this kind of treachery at all, considering how much he has done for us. He has always proven worthy of our trust in the past."

There was a brief murmur of agreement, but it was an uneasy admission. Hisagi was the one to verbalize what they were all thinking aloud.

"We once thought the same of Aizen and Tosen too," he said slowly and painfully.

Then Soifon said, "We have records that a gate between the Living World and Soul Society opened up at 1830 hours. The entrance from the Living World was traced back to the basement of the Urahara Shop."

"Do we know the current locations of Urahara and Yoruichi?" Ukitake asked.

"No," Soifon said tersely, clearly unhappy with Yoruichi's possible implication in affairs. "Both of them have been missing and incommunicado for the past six months. Likewise for the Vizard. Their disappearances are not an uncommon occurrence though, so we took no note of it at the time. However, there was a report from the patrolling shinigami of an individual who entered the shop during our suspected timeframe."

She finished, "Substitute shinigami Kurosaki Ichigo."

"No. I call bullshit," Renji growled. "Someone is trying to frame Kurosaki."

"Then what, exactly, would you have us believe?" Soifon asked. "Kurosaki has a spirit pressure so large that, at its peak, can't be detected through conventional means. He is currently the only individual in Karakura Town with high enough spirit pressure to be a suspect. His bankai is visually unobtrusive and highly suited to swift surprise attacks. And even with a surprise attack, do you honestly think Hitsugaya Toushiro could be defeated without even a flicker of spirit pressure, unless his opponent had some other way of catching him off guard?"

"The last time this happened, Aizen had us all chasing after Kurosaki like idiots. What's to say it's not the same this time too?" Renji staunchly defended.

"Aizen Sosuke is no longer a factor," Yamamoto spoke for the first time during the entire meeting. "Several observers that have never come in contact with Kyoka Suigetsu have confirmed his continued imprisonment. Hitsugaya Toushiro does not have the means to duplicate such a feat, nor a motive to do so."

"Neither does Ichigo! There's no possible reason he would do this," Renji said.

Yamamoto made no reply. To Renji's shock, Ukitake looked away and Unohana closed her eyes, as if in pain. Kyoraku made a soft _'hmm'_ and tilted his hat to hide his eyes. Sui-Feng's expression went cold like ice. Renji's heart missed a beat as realization clicked quietly into place.

_'They think there's a reason that might make Ichigo would do this,'_ Renji realized with growing alarm. _'They know something that none of the other captains have been authorized to know. What the hell have they done? What could possibly be so bad that would make Ichigo do something like this?'_

"There is still the possibility that Hitsugaya Toushiro has betrayed us despite his death, or that things are not as they seem," Komamura said. "What reason did he have to keep such a thing secret? Why insist on handling this alone?"

"To that, I have a confession to make," Unohana spoke up quietly. Her usual serenity had given way to a soul-deep sense of sorrow. "Hitsugaya-taicho spoke to me several times in confidence. He refused, however, to name who he suspected and requested that I keep his investigation secret until he had confirmed his suspicions, one way or another. I assented to his request. Even at the time, it was quite obvious he was protecting a friend who might be involved, though I did not know who. He had faith in that individual above any evidence he uncovered. I think...Hitsugaya-taicho believed in Kurosaki Ichigo's innocence, to the very end."

The room went quiet enough to hear a pin drop.

"Then I believe we know what we must do," Yamamoto finished.

. . .

"Ukitake-taicho...did the meeting go well?" Rukia asked as she jogged up to her captain's side, her mirror-like eyes filled with concern. The white-haired captain – the only white-haired captain now – had looked quite ill going into the meeting. He came out looking like he had just climbed off his deathbed.

Still, the man managed a smile, strained and fleeting though it was.

"It went as well as could be expected, I suppose." Ukitake answered.

"Ah. Quite badly then," Rukia noted.

Ukitake chuckled and said nothing else, so Rukia fell in stride a few steps behind her captain as any dutiful lieutenant should. Perhaps a little closer than usual, because Ukitake-taicho looked distinctly unsteady on his feet. A pensive frown spread over her face. Something was wrong, very wrong. Even idiot Renji had walked out of the meeting hall looking like he had just gone through a torture session. Before she could slap some answers out of him, though, he had vanished with shunpo, and there was no way she could have chased after him with her captain looking like he was about to keel over.

She was so deep in thought that, when Ukitake suddenly stopped, she nearly smacked right into his back and knocked him over herself. Only combat reflexes let her check her movement in time.

"Rukia-kun. Would you say that Kurosaki Ichigo was friends with Hitsugaya-taicho?"

Rukia blinked. "I suppose so. They had a mutual understanding of sorts, I think." A question bubbled up on her lips – what did Ichigo have to do with anything – but her deeply ingrained respect for her captain forestalled it before the words made it out of her mouth.

"I see. In that case, I have a mission for you," Ukitake said.

Rukia straightened, snapping to attention.

Ukitake kept his back turned to her as he said softly, "Go to the living world and ask Kurosaki-kun if he would be willing to come to Soul Society for Hitsugaya-taicho's funeral."

"Yes sir," Rukia answered with a bow. The rest of the long, long walk back to the Thirteenth Division headquarters was spent without another word passing between captain and lieutenant. Ukitake seemed content with silence, and Rukia made no motion to break it. If her captain didn't feel the need to elaborate on the details of the meeting as he usually did, then it wasn't her place to ask.

Only much, much later did she realize that not once had Ukitake looked her in the eye.

. . .

_Author's Note:_

_First of all, special thanks to Kasimir for being a spectacularly awesome beta-reader._

_And so the downhill tumble beings! And what long, long downhill roll it's going to be. This chapter is still setting up the scene and laying out the foundations of the various secrets and plots going on in the background. The next chapter will have actual action scenes instead of just people standing around talking, I promise!_

_Here's a free hint for those of you who like guessing future plot developments – did anyone notice parallels between Hitsugaya's letter and another letter that we see in canon?_


	4. part iii: sepia

. . .

∙** the **∙ **color** ∙** of **∙** psychosis** ∙**  
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part ( iii )

. . .

It was odd how, while so many things changed, others uncannily stayed the same.

The air still smelled like late autumn showers and river reeds, the drooping sun still washed the town in nostalgic sepia, and the dismissal school bell still tolled in the distance just as she remembered it. The people were different, but the town was the same. The more she looked, the more she remembered: the same takoyaki stand around the corner, the same crooked street sign next to the bike rack, even the same faulty vending machine that had broken so many hearts.

It was hard to believe that it had been almost a whole decade. Just ten years ago, a battle for the whole world once waged across these peaceful skies.

Fallen leaves crunched quietly under her feet. She wished there was a happier reason for her visit, but she was glad to be back in Karakura all the same. Her feet stopped just as the old Kurosaki clinic came into view.

In a moment of serendipity, the front door swung open just then. A kindly, middle-aged mother stepped out with her hand on the shoulder of her son, who was sporting a cast on his arm and a few bandages around his head. The woman was thanking to someone hidden in the doorframe, saying, "I don't know how I can thank you enough for this, Kurosaki-sensei. If you hadn't been there when Yosuke fell, I don't know what I would have done. Is there any way we can repay you?"

"It's not a big deal, really," a male voice said, and that was all the warning Rukia got before the speaker stepped into view.

He was a little taller than the last time she had seen him. Twenty-five-year-old Kurosaki Ichigo had traded his casual clothes for slacks, a dress shirt, and a clean white lab coat sometime in the last few years, and it only reminded Rukia how much more quickly time passed for the living compared to the dead. While he still sported the same untamable head of strawberry orange hair, the same lean, athletic build, the same warm brown eyes and handsome face, this Ichigo looked and acted so much older and politer than the hot-blooded fifteen-year-old who had once stormed through enemy cities to rescue damsels in distress, whether they wanted to be rescued or not.

But then he squatted down to the boy's eye level and said, "Oi, you forgot something." He held out a gritty baseball out to the surprised child with a quirked eyebrow and a half-smirk that made him seem fifteen all over again. "Next time, try the doorbell before you try the fence, okay?"

The kid blushed and the mother thanked him profusely again before pulling her son into her bosom and heading down the street.

Straightening, Ichigo finally acknowledged his shinigami visitor.

"Hey Rukia. Been a while, hasn't it?" No surprise. No shock. Just familiarity. He had probably sensed her long before he saw her.

"Ichigo," she greeted, her lips tugging upwards despite herself.

He mirrored her smile.

"What, no insults and bodily harm this time?"

Opening the front door again, he held it for her, and the invitation to come in couldn't have been clearer.

"Fool." She obliged and gave him a light thwack on the arm. His chuckle was almost achingly familiar, a warmth that she hadn't even realize she had missed. Part of her was irrationally pleased at how easy it was to slip right back into their odd routine.

"Don't mind the mess. You can sit wherever," he said as they walked inside, though as far as Rukia could see, the only part of the clinic that could be considered remotely messy was the desk in the corner, strewn with loose papers and file folders. Ichigo picked up a coffee mug sitting at the corner of the desk and disappeared through an adjacent door briefly before coming back with a fresh cup of coffee in one hand and, to her delight, a juice box in the other.

Rukia gratefully took both the juice box and a chance to properly appraise Kurosaki Ichigo close up.

"The white coat, it suits you," Rukia said. Then she smirked and added, "I guess even a dummy like you can be a doctor with enough luck."

Ichigo snorted, "Luck my ass. You go through six years of med-school and see how you like it. I shouldn't have let Dad talk me into it."

His words held an odd note of regret to it despite his joking tone, but Rukia didn't press the subject. She had meant what she said, even if she privately thought a different white coat would have suited him better. But that was neither here nor there. There was no way Ichigo would ever take that offer even if the Central 46 allowed such a thing.

"How is everyone doing, anyway?" Rukia asked before her thoughts could travel down that path.

"Yuzu's getting her nursing degree in Tokyo, and Karin went with her, though she's opting for police academy instead. Dad was being stupid about how his '_precious flowers_' would get lost in the big city, so he's there too," Ichigo said sarcastically, but the fond smile on his face took all the bite out of his words. "Inoue's still overseas getting her teaching license, Tatsuki's on tour after winning the last championship, and Chad was in Tokyo too last time I checked. Ishida, eh, he's avoiding Karakura since his old man wants him to take over the hospital."

'_If you visited more often, you would have known all that,_' went unsaid. He never questioned her absences. Their friendship had always a relationship defined by partings instead of proximity, especially when official shinigami policy strictly forbade all close interactions between the living and the dead.

"So how're things on the other side? Renji still an idiot and Byakuya still a stuck-up jerk?" he joked.

"Oi! Ni-sama is not–" she protested, but stopped short. The casual mention of Soul Society was a sharp reminder of what she had come here to do. No matter how much she had missed bantering with Ichigo, she was here on official orders; a captain had passed away barely a day ago, and already, she had let herself forget why she was visiting the living world in the first place. A wave of shame washed over her and her expression sobered.

"Ni-sama and Renji are fine. However, as much as I wish this was just a friendly visit, Ichigo, that's not why I'm here," she said.

Her shift in tone gave Ichigo pause. Sizing her up, the orange-haired man ventured, "Okay, I'm guessing it's not good news if you're warning me first. Is there some new kind of impending doom or what?"

"No," Rukia answered. She took a moment to steel herself before saying as bluntly as she could, "Ukitake-taicho wanted to offer you the chance to be present for Hitsugaya-taicho's funeral."

The coffee cup froze halfway to Ichigo's lips, and there was a long pause before he slowly set the cup back down on the desk.

"...fuck. Wasn't expecting that one," he swore quietly. There was an odd mix of emotions that briefly struggled for dominance over his face – too shallow to be grief, but too deep to be just sympathy. Anger. Guilt? No, probably was just regret for a fallen ally. He finally settled on looking troubled as he asked, "How'd it happen?"

"We don't know. The captains are investigating, but they aren't sharing any details," said Rukia.

"So basically, it's like the whole Aizen thing all over again," Ichigo deadpanned. He fell ominously silent for a moment to digest the news. Then he murmured, "_Dammit_. He picked a really shitty time to up and die."

"I don't think Hitsugaya-taicho had much choice in being murdered," Rukia pointed out grimly.

"Do they know who's behind it?" A dangerous light was beginning to creep into Ichigo's eyes. Rukia had expected anger, but not like this. This was colder and calmer, much calmer than she had expected him to be. Maybe he had changed more than she thought. For the first time, Rukia felt a stab of unease, though she couldn't pinpoint where it was coming from.

"Only suspicions. Like I said, the captains are keeping a tight lid on what they know," Rukia said.

"When do we leave?"

"Right now, if you want."

Ichigo's fingers curled into a fist.

"Good. I want to be there when they catch the bastard."

. . .

Kira slid the door to Hinamori's hospital room shut with a heavy heart.

In the end, Unohana had deemed it best to simply let the poor girl sleep – preferably somewhere with no reminders of the late Tenth Division captain, which ruled out her own quarters and squad office. In the end, Kira hadn't known what to say or what to do to comfort her, just like he hadn't known what to do or what to say when Aizen had apparently been murdered. He felt useless. Worse than useless. He hadn't even been able to hold her while she cried, because that would be a breach of the polite distance his rigid upbringing dictated of friendship. That's all he was. Just a friend, polite and distant, nothing like a captain she would die for to or a childhood friend who would die for her.

"Well, you sure look gloomy," someone spoke from behind him, and Kira nearly jumped out of his skin.

He whirled around to find Matsumoto's familiar face inches away from his. He immediately backpedaled and averted his gaze downwards, and then realized his mistake and shunted his eyes back upwards with haste. The entire exchange had him backed against Hinamori's hospital door and Matsumoto looking at him with amusement.

"R-Rangiku-san. You look, um, is there something I can help you with?" Kira aborted his first tactless comment mid-sentence. _'You look fine'_ somehow implied that she shouldn't be. The Tenth Division lieutenant might be much less delicate than Hinamori, but she probably had just as many raw edges that Kira wanted to avoid scraping.

If Matsumoto caught his slip, though, nothing on her face showed it. She merely rested a hand on her hip and asked, "Is that Hinamori-chan's room behind you?"

"Ah, yes. She's sleeping at the moment though, so I don't think now is a good time," Kira answered.

Matsumoto's eyes softened.

"The poor girl. This must all seem like one long nightmare to her. Were you the one who brought her here?"

Kira nodded mutely. He had been here with Hinamori when the emergency captain's meeting had been called, but Unohana had motioned for him to stay, saying that Hinamori-fukutaicho's need for a friend at the moment outweighed the need for his presence at the meeting hall. Though the Fourth Division captain had meant the words kindly, Kira had taken them bitterly – he had few illusions about what the meeting would be about, and he also had few illusions about his own contributions. After all, he had been drunk during the entirety of Hitsugaya-taicho's murder, which both freed him from suspicion and chained him down with guilt.

The next few hours had been miserably spent listening to Hinamori cry and waiting for a butterfly informing him of the meeting's particulars. When he had tried to leave, Hinamori had given the empty chair next to her bed such a broken look – so much for avoiding reminders of Hitsugaya – and asked him to stay. So he stayed, no matter how much he felt like an imposter in the wrong role. The girl had finally cried herself into unconsciousness mere minutes ago; the butterfly had yet to arrive.

"Thank you," Matsumoto said, jolting Kira out of his reverie. "Taicho would have appreciated it, you staying by her side like this."

"No, it was the least I could do," Kira murmured, bowing his head. _'It was all I could do,'_ his inner voice added self-deprecatingly. Taking a closer look at the Tenth Division lieutenant, Kira could see the skillfully applied make-up that hid the dark circles under her eyes and the slight puffiness that came from long periods of crying. Her lips were smiling; her eyes were not. He pretended he couldn't tell.

"Oh, before I forget," Matsumoto said, still forcing that over-bright smile, "I hope you didn't miss this. With all the chaos the squad's been in, I completely forgot about it until now."

She held out a familiar wallet. Kira blinked once, uncomprehending – he had been sure he had lost his wallet to a pickpocket while passed out drunk – before realizing that she must have taken it from him the night before to prevent just that. Accepting it sheepishly, he murmured a quiet '_thank you_' and hoped it didn't stir up too many unpleasant thoughts.

"If you see Hisagi before I can get to him, tell him I have his too," the buxom woman fished another familiar-looking wallet out to demonstrate, but before Kira could reply, the familiar bell-like sound of a hell butterfly's approach caught both of their attention.

"Ah," Kira realized belatedly, "you must have missed the meeting as well." And then cringed, because the only reason Matsumoto would have even needed to attend a captain's meeting would be because her own captain had been rendered incapable of doing so. The words had slipped out before he could catch himself.

If the slight flicker of pain on her face caused Kira any guilt, though, it was nothing compared to the look on her face after the hell butterfly had completed its message.

For a solid ten minutes, the lieutenants of the Third and Tenth stood deathly still in the hallways, listening to earth-shattering truths delivered in emotionless monotone. Hitsugaya Toushiro's secret investigation. Confirmed rumors of uprising in Rukongai. Impending war on the horizon. Kurosaki Ichigo as the prime suspect of murder and treason.

"...K-Kurosaki?" Kira repeated slowly, unable to believe his ears. "Uprising? There must be some kind of mistake."

"He never breathed a word of this," Matsumoto whispered, her eyes expression cracking with grief and betrayal. Somehow, Kira didn't think '_he'_ was referring to Kurosaki Ichigo. "He never told me anything."

"Rangiku-san..." Once again, he didn't know what to say. Didn't know if there was anything that _could_ be said.

Before he could make up his mind though, the blare of a Seireitei-wide announcement call sounded over the city.

_"By the order of the Central 46, all captains and lieutenants are to report to the Senkaimon immediately and assist in the arrest of substitute shinigami Kurosaki Ichigo. I repeat, all captains and lieutenants are to report to the Senkaimon immediately and arrest substitute shinigami Kurosaki Ichigo."_

He cast a worried glance at Matsumoto, and she turned her face away – but not before he glimpsed the telltale glitter of wetness on her eyelashes.

Her back was ramrod straight, her chin was held high, and her voice was steady as she said, "Go, Kira. And please apologize to the captains for my absence." Her hands trembled as they formed fists at her sides.

She didn't offer any explanation for disobeying a direct order from the Central 46.

Kira didn't need to ask.

A lieutenant should only swing their blade out of duty after all, never in anger, and never in grief.

. . .

Ichigo couldn't help but feel guilty as he made preparations to go to Soul Society.

He couldn't shake the feeling that Toushiro's death was somehow his fault. Never mind the fact that he hadn't seen the kid in years. Never mind the fact that their last meeting had only been a brief greeting, a situation update, and a few hours of hunting a hollow together because the young captain thought having back-up was prudent. Toushiro didn't do friendly – he had always been all seriousness and work for as long as Ichigo had known him. Even Karin knew the guy better than Ichigo did.

He still couldn't help but wonder if there had been some way to save the young captain.

There had been Urahara's note. That stupid note that made no sense before, and frankly, still didn't make a whole lot of sense even now. Goddamn the man and his cryptic ways. Six months of silence, and when the shopkeeper finally decided to contact him, all he got was a single sentence taped to his window that did nothing but make him feel like he had missed something really, really important, and that Toushiro was dead because of he hadn't figured it out in time.

It hadn't been signed, but he had recognized the loopy handwriting and the inane choice of words immediately:_ 'Don't forget to visit the shop and get the kitties vaccinated! You'll need it if you want to keep them healthy before flu season ~ __'_

It could have meant anything from a new strain of flu to the impending end of the world for all he knew.

He had finally gone to the shop to look for answers yesterday afternoon, but the entire place had been deserted. Even better, it had been booby trapped – the second he stepped through the door, he had gotten a face full of pale yellow mist. He had breathed in half a mouthful in surprise, and by the time he came to, the sun had set, he had missed all of his afternoon appointments, and Urahara was getting a face full of fist the next time Ichigo saw him.

But in the end, he hadn't learned anything new. The note still hadn't made sense, and he had no explanation for the annoying incidents that plagued him.

It had started with small things at first – electrical blackouts, attempted muggings, nothing unusual. Then things had gotten worse. An elderly man falling asleep at the wheel and crashing his car right where Ichigo had been standing moments ago. A construction cable suddenly snapping and dropping three tons of steel beams right above his head. The gas stove switching on in the middle of the night when he hadn't touched it all day. He had scoured high and low for whatever was trying to kill him, but nothing turned up, and he had been so frustrated that he wished aloud that it would just hurry up and _do something_ so he could find it and kill it.

In a twisted way, he had been hoping for something just like this - something major, something permanent, something that would break the stalemate his life had become and give him some goddamn answers.

It didn't make any logical sense, but somehow, Rukia showing up a few days afterwards seemed too scripted to be coincidence.

Now, a captain had been killed, Soul Society was in chaos, and while Toushiro hadn't been a close friend the way Renji or Rukia were, he had still been a comrade-in-arms. Someone Ichigo could count on to tell him what he needed to know and to watch his back in a fight. Knowing that Hitsugaya's cool-headed reliability was gone for good hurt more than he expected.

He had to cancel all of his appointments for the next three days and call up Inoue to tell her the bad news. He didn't think that she'd cry so hard over someone who had only lived with her for a few months so many years ago, but she did, and he felt horrible listening to it over the phone. He had hesitated for a while before deciding to call up Karin too. She hadn't cried, but she had gone very quiet before hanging up the phone, and Ichigo had a sinking suspicion that his sister had been a bit closer to Toushiro than anyone had guessed.

His week was toeing the line between bad and worse. He really just wanted an enemy he could just beat up with everything he had, because all of this nonsensical guesswork was frustrating him to no end.

Five seconds later, after he stepped out of the Senkaimon behind Rukia, he regretted that stray thought, because his week shot right past '_worse'_ well into '_fucked up beyond all recognition' _territory.

"Okay, not that this isn't touching and all, but why the welcoming committee?" he asked.

Almost every captain and lieutenant in the Gotei 13 stood arrayed in a half circle around the Senkaimon, grim-faced and equipped with their zanpakuto. A few dozen black-clad members of the special forces stood behind the circle of captains.

"Ukitake-taicho, what–?" Rukia asked, clearly no better informed than he was, but Ukitake silenced her by holding up a hand.

"Kurosaki-san, I apologize for the abruptness, but we need you to cooperate with us for the time being," the white-haired man said.

Immediately, Ichigo felt something off kilter, as if he'd missed a symptom in a diagnosis or completely misjudged an opponent's strength in a fight. His hand itched to grab Zangetsu off his back. He looked around at the shinigami present. Faces he hadn't seen in years, but remained completely unchanged from his memories. Byakuya's expression was carefully inscrutable, which honestly wasn't all that surprising. Unohana's expression was equally unreadable. Kenpachi looked downright pissed, while Kyoraku looked worryingly serious. Even Renji looked grim, which was more surprising than the presence of a white cloak over his friend's shoulders.

With every other captain present, Hitsugaya's absence stood out like an open wound.

Soifon stepped forward, her face completely cold. "You will hand over your zanpakuto and follow me to the Central 46 for questioning, substitute shinigami Kurosaki Ichigo."

"And what if I have a problem with that?" he asked, placing a wary hand around Zangetsu's hilt and shifting his weight carefully to his back leg in case he needed to block an attack.

Sui-Feng's eyes took on a dangerous light as her hand rested casually on the sword belted behind her back. Ichigo could almost hear the blood humming in his ears. Part of him – the sensible, mature part that he generally listened to – was dead set against the idea of taking on quite so many captains and lieutenants at once. He hadn't fought for real in years. There was no way he'd win, as out of practice as he was. And even if he could, the thought of fighting so many people he considered friends and allies made him sick at heart.

But another part of him, tucked away in the darkest little corner of his heart, didn't care about anything at all and just wanted a fight - a real fight, an excuse to use every ounce of the overwhelming power that lay dormant inside him. His hand itched.

"Oh, for crying out loud! The sooner the stupid council gets what they want, the sooner we can start figuring out what's really going on," Renji interrupted before either blade could be swung.

"Ukitake-taicho, you ordered me to bring Ichigo here for a funeral, not an arrest. What is the meaning of this?" It was the first time Ichigo had heard Rukia speak to her captain with anything less than the utmost respect, and her eyes were flinty with the implied betrayal of her trust.

Ukitake, on the other hand, only looked tired. Extending a hand palm-up towards them, the white-haired captain said apologetically, "I'm afraid the Central 46 supersedes the authority of the Gotei 13. Several things are very precariously balanced at the moment, Kurosaki Ichigo. I must ask you to trust us and cooperate for the time being. There is more at stake than you know."

Ichigo hesitated. Every fiber of his being warned against giving away his only weapon. On the other hand, something in Ukitake's tone of voice gave him pause. _More at stake than you know_. Waging a one-man war against the most powerful organization in the afterlife wasn't likely to get him anywhere. Besides, he wanted answers.

So there really wasn't even a choice to begin with. Ichigo scowled, slung Zangetsu off his back, and handed the zanpakuto to the older man hilt-first. He thought that Soifon seemed distinctly smug as she clamped the handcuffs over his wrists despite her stoic expression, and Ichigo nearly staggered as his own spirit pressure suddenly vanished. His fate was officially out of his own hands.

Ukitake's eyes visibly softened and showed relief. "Thank you, Kurosaki-san. Please, come this way."

. . .

Ichigo wasn't feeling particularly charitable to the Central 46 as he stepped into their council room. As far as he knew, Seireitei's bureaucracy existed solely to make life difficult for anyone who actually wanted to get anything done.

From the looks on their faces, they weren't feeling particularly charitable towards him either. They watched him warily from a safe distance. It made Ichigo feel like a zoo animal on display, and the comparison didn't help his current mood at all.

To his surprise, though, he wasn't alone under their scrutiny. Old man Yamamoto stood in the center of the floor, solemn and dignified, although noticeably missing his cane. Despite Ryujin Jakka's absence, the feeling of heavy power still hung over the captain-commander like a cloak, pulsing with invisible heat. No handcuffs, Ichigo noticed, though he couldn't imagine anyone brave enough to suggest such a thing in the first place. No wonder the Central 46 adjutants were on edge.

"Kurosaki Ichigo," the councilman sitting behind a plaque marked with the number one called his attention upwards. "You stand accused grave crimes. How do you plead?"

Ichigo stared, uncomprehending.

"I had about five seconds before you guys arrested me as soon as I stepped through the gate. Unless breathing is a crime now, I didn't have time to break any of your stupid laws," he retorted.

There was a brief titter of outrage at his insolence, but the first speaker held up his hand again, motioning for silence. He stared down at Ichigo and said, "You are accused of the murder of Hitsugaya Toushiro. To attack a captain–"

"_What?_" Ichigo shouted.

"–is strictly forbidden," the councilor continued, ignoring the interruption. "To slay one is punishable by death without trial. Only the joint appeal of seven captains has granted you this audience. What do you have to say in your own defense?"

"I didn't even know anything had happened until Rukia told me!"

"A mere claim with nothing to support it," a woman, this time, seated behind the number twenty-four spoke. "Hitsugaya Toushiro arranged a meeting with you shortly before his death. Where were you between the third hour of noon and the first hour of twilight yesterday?"

Yesterday afternoon. He had gone to the Urahara shop, and then – the trap, the sleeping gas –

"You were seen entering the Urahara shop. A portal was opened from the basement to Soul Society – specifically, to the headquarters of the Tenth Division. Explain yourself, Kurosaki Ichigo_,_" the woman demanded.

"I never set foot in the basement," Ichigo said slowly. "I was knocked out at the front door."

"Despite the fact that no other spirit presence was anywhere near your vicinity?"

"I got caught off-guard by one of sandal hat's stupid inventions. By the time I came to, it was already sundown," Ichigo admitted.

The woman looked unconvinced. Not surprising – Ichigo didn't think he sounded very convincing either. He frowned as his mind tried to piece everything together. Toushiro had arranged a meeting with him? Then why was this the first time he had heard of it? The fact that the time of the murder coincided with his visit to Urahara's shop couldn't be a coincidence either. Had someone knocked him out in order to frame him? But then, how had they set up a trap in advance? No one had any way of knowing he was headed to Urahara's shop; the time between his previous visits ranged anywhere between a few days and a few years.

Wait. Urahara's note. _Don't forget to visit the shop_. But it couldn't be. Sure, the shopkeeper was shady as hell, but Ichigo trusted the man implicitly, at least where it counted. There was no way Urahara would kill Toushiro or set him up to take the fall.

"So essentially, you are saying that you are unaware of anything you may have done that afternoon," a softer voice sounded from his left, and he glanced upwards to see a younger councilor sitting behind the number forty. "Can you deny the possibility that you may have killed Hitsugaya and simply not remembered? I believe you have had previous incidents where a hostile part of your soul controlled your body while you yourself were unconscious. Or am I mistaken?"

The councilor's words sent a bolt of ice through Ichigo's blood. It _had_ happened before. He still didn't fully remember how he had killed Ulquiorra. But that had happened before he fully mastered the final Getsuga Tensho, and his inner hollow should be completely under control. He hadn't even come close to losing his grip in a decade.

But the possibility was _there_, and it made Ichigo feel almost physically ill.

"The Gotei 13 will vouch for Kurosaki Ichigo's innocence in this affair," Yamamoto intoned, much to Ichigo's surprise.

"Your word means nothing here, Yamamoto-soutaicho," yet another councilor spoke angrily. "Have you forgotten that Kurosaki Ichigo's powers were restored on _your_ orders? If he is found guilty, then you and all of the Gotei 13 are also guilty, of incompetence and poor judgment. I do not think the consequences of such a judgment need any elaboration. Let Hitsugaya Toushiro's death and the revolt of Rukongai be on _your_ head!"

Yamamoto's eyes opened just a crack, smoldering like dark coals, and for a moment, Ichigo expected the councilor who had spoken to burst into flame. In the end though, the old captain-commander visibly reined in his anger and simply said, "So be it."

There was a thundering silence as Yamamoto's heavy declaration sank in. Several council members looked openly shocked by Yamamoto's refusal to withdraw his support. Ichigo found himself caught off guard too; he had always been under the impression that Yamamoto obeyed every law to the letter. After a week full of nasty surprises, this one couldn't have come with better timing.

The first councilor seemed to recover the fastest, though he was still visibly unsettled as he said, "We will take it into consideration. The Central 46 will now confer. Remove Kurosaki Ichigo to solitary confinement until we are ready to pronounce our judgment."

The guards by the door slid it open, but didn't approach. Yamamoto gazed at the members of the Central 46 for a long moment before turning towards the exit, and Ichigo followed.

As the doors slid shut again behind them, Ichigo asked, "Why did you...none of the people in there even came close to a captain's level of spirit pressure. They can't do anything unless you let them – so, why are you playing along with their rules?"

Yamamoto stopped and very slowly, very deliberately, looked Ichigo in the eye. And suddenly looked very, very old.

"Because I cannot always be right," the old man said simply and nothing more.

. . .

Solitary confinement was exactly that – solitary and confined. It took Ichigo exactly fifteen steps to walk from one side of the cell to the other. The cell was carved from the same white stone that formed the walls around Seireitei, and Ichigo could barely feel even the faintest flicker of his own spirit pressure.

"Would a toilet have been too much to ask for?" he grimaced, leaning against the wall and propping his elbows on his knees. His hands were still cuffed, he had no idea where Zangetsu was, and he had gotten the feeling that the Central 46 had already made up their minds before they had even seen him, and the entire interrogation had just been a formality. Not the most comforting thought, considering that the punishment of a guilty verdict was probably execution, but Ichigo found himself surprisingly calm.

It helped that when he had focused on the faint flicker of his own spirit pressure hard enough, the cuffs had cracked a little. The handcuffs and the cell walls in tandem had been designed to resist up to a captain's level of spirit pressure, but Ichigo had gone well beyond that. If he really needed to, he could probably rip them off and blast his way out of here with with brute force.

Ironic how, a few hours ago, he had been sitting in a clinic wondering why nothing seemed to be happening with the shinigami or the hollows. Now he was sitting in a tiny cell, knee deep in a mess he couldn't even being to figure out.

_'Please trust us,'_ Ukitake had asked, and well, look where it got him. Things could hardly be worse.

Just as he had that thought, the door to the cell slid open.

Ichigo sat up immediately. The guards told him it would be a few hours before someone came to fetch him; it had hardly been fifteen minutes.

"Did something happen?" he asked the figure silhouetted by the doorway.

His only answer was a knife aimed straight at his eye.

"–!"

Combat honed reflexes barely saved his life as he ducked out of the way, and the knife smashed into the wall behind him hard enough to shatter the sekkiseki stone into powder. Ichigo rolled off the cot and onto his feet in a single smooth motion, blinking through the trickle of blood now oozing from a cut across his eyebrow.

The assassin lunged at him with another knife and Ichigo didn't have time waste on confusion. Dropping down to the floor, he let the wild swing pass over him and kicked upwards with both feet, sending the attacker careening into the wall as he scrambled back upright. Damn it, he didn't realize how rusty he was with hand-to-hand combat until now. The occasional hollow or delinquent attack barely honed his skills at all. Tatsuki would have kicked his ass if she saw how sloppy his overhead kick had been. The handcuffs definitely weren't helping, but he needed to focus in order to get them off, and he seriously doubted his enemy would be willing to cooperate and let him have the time to gather his focus.

The man he had kicked into the wall rebounded far too quickly for his liking. Ichigo heard an animalistic growl before the man was charging at him again, this time with a knife in each hand.

'_It's been way too long since I've practiced karate,_' Ichigo thought as he executed a heel-spin out of the path of one knife and followed through with a heel-kick to the man's face. He cursed when the man dodged – without spirit pressure, all of his own movements were too slow – because he didn't have time to regain his balance and dodge away from the knife stabbing towards his throat.

He caught the knife on his handcuffs and twisted. If the stupid things were designed to hold in his ridiculous spirit pressure, then they should be able to stand up to a measly knife, no sweat. Sure enough, the cuffs held true and he managed to wrench the knife out of the attacker's hands, sending it skittering across the floor under his cot. The jarring impact felt like someone playing xylophone on his bones, but Ichigo gritted his teeth and forced himself to follow through with a savage head-butt to the man's nose.

Then he heard, "Hado, fourth spell, Byakurai!"

Luckily, the brilliant blue lightning struck the assassin and not him, piercing straight through the man's chest before dissipating into the sekkiseki stones.

Ukitake stood at the doorway, finger outstretched and face grim.

"I thought something like this would happen. I'm glad I wasn't too late," the Thirteenth Division captain said, lowering his hand.

Ichigo glanced from the bleeding assassin on the floor back to Ukitake, somewhat disbelieving. As far as he knew, Ukitake had never used lethal force when there was any other option. "You...there wasn't any need to kill him."

Ukitake was already kneeling next to the body and turning it over, checking the lapel on the inside of the man's robe. He murmured, "A Shihouin crest. This is serious. We never thought they'd strike so quickly, or so openly, but with this, our worst fears are confirmed." The man straightened and looked Ichigo dead in the eye. "There's no time – you need to get out of here before they catch you."

"Who exactly is '_they'_?" Ichigo demanded.

Ukitake only shook his head and said, "Take Zangetsu with you." Ichigo realized belatedly that Ukitake had been carrying an additional katana he had never seen before, but still recognized immediately – Zangetsu, fully sealed for the first time. Ukitake pressed the blade into his hands. The man continued, "Keep the hand-cuffs on as long as you possibly can; they'll prevent us from tracking you down by your spirit energy. If you head to the West Gate, Jidanbo will open the Gateway for you, and a mutual friend will help you from there."

Ichigo didn't budge.

"Ukitake-san. I'm not stupid enough to break out of jail without even knowing _why_ I should be breaking out in the first place. Especially if they're going to automatically assume I'm guilty if I run. So I think I deserve at least a few damn seconds worth of explanation," the twenty-five-year-old man said levelly.

Ukitake gave him a look that seemed surprised and scrutinizing at the same time, before a faint smile ghosted across his lips.

"I seem to have mistaken youth for foolishness once again. You're right; I apologize, Kurosaki Ichigo," the man said. "I can't explain everything – but I will say this. You are unique in that your strength stands alone, unaffiliated with any organization or faction save yourself. Because of that, several very well-connected people want you dead. You are a very capable fighter, Kurosaki-kun, but these people have no interest in a straight fight. They will use politics, assassination, hostages, and any means available. This man was only the first attempt of many." Ukitake's lips tightened into a grim frown. "If you stay, it won't matter how skilled you are – they will kill you, and hurt the people you care about in the process. To keep that from happening, you need to be somewhere they can't reach – hidden and out of contact with Seireitei. Does that explanation satisfy you?"

"No, not really," Ichigo said with a frown. Ukitake was leaving out a couple important details, he was sure of it. Yet, when he thought about everything that had happened to him in the last week, things suddenly made a lot more sense. So some new megalomaniac was trying to kill him. Not a comforting thought, but not surprising either, and at least he knew there was a reason his week had been so shitty now.

"But it's enough to get my ass moving though. West Gate, right?"

"Yes, and you'll get a better explanation then, I promise."

Ichigo nodded tersely, gripping Zangetsu tightly. Before he left though, he turned and asked, "Won't you get into trouble for this? The whole Gotei 13, actually? The Central 46 guys were talking about consequences that sounded pretty serious."

"The Central 46 has already made up their minds, and nothing we do will change it," Ukitake said grimly, but then he managed another faint smile, "As for me though, ah, I tend to have coughing fits at inopportune moments. Can't be helped," Ukitake said, and Ichigo would have laughed if the situation hadn't been so tense.

. . .

Of course, the words '_stealthy_' and '_Kurosaki'_ never worked together in a sentence.

"Oh, give me a break!" he yelled as he turned a corner right into a gaggle of Eleventh Division members. They took one look at his handcuffs and cheerfully decided a chase was in order. After that, the situation quickly collapsed like a set of dominoes, as the chaos attracted more people who then added to the chaos, and everything spiraled downwards in a miserable little vicious cycle.

He skidded around another ninety-degree turn and nearly crashed into a very familiar red-haired lieutenant. Or, captain now, Ichigo supposed, judging by the white coat.

'_Well, at least it's not Byakuya. Or Kenpachi,'_ Ichigo thought uncharitably. He had a healthy respect for his friend though, and didn't relish his chances with his hands cuffed and his spirit pressure sealed.

Renji, however, just eyed him contemplatively and then eyed the distant stampede of pursuers with an equally contemplative look before drawing Zabimaru.

"I talked to Rukia," the red-head said, and Ichigo blinked at the non sequitur. "We realized it was obvious that there was no way you'd be guilty. And if you're actually dumb enough to pull this kind of shit, then it'd be up to us to knock some sense back into ya – we'll hunt you down and kick your ass into the next century."

Renji gave him an absolutely vicious grin.

"Get outta here Ichigo. I'm saying we got your back, dumbass."

There wasn't really any need for a thank you or anything like that. Renji just gave him a mock salute and Ichigo was off running again, the same vicious grin slowly pulling at his own lips. It was strangely good to know that, no matter how screwed up things got, he could still count on his friends.

Behind him, Renji roared "Howl, Zabimaru!" to the sounds of several terrified cries, and Ichigo didn't look back.

Despite Renji's help, a few shinigami peeled off from the main group and got around the Fifth Division captain and were pretty close on his. Goddamn handcuffs. Goddamn seal. If he could just use a single shunpo, he'd have left all of these guys in the dust long ago. The West Gate loomed ahead, already held open by a concerned looking Jidanbo. Distantly, Kurosaki wondered how many people were knew what Ukitake knew, but he stashed that thought away for the time being and focused on sprinting.

"Good luck, Kurosaki Ichigo!" Jidanbo boomed as he raced past the Gate. Ichigo briefly raised his hand in a backwards wave, and heard the ponderous Gate start sliding closed between him and his pursuers. A brief backwards glance showed that few were close enough to make it through, however, and Ichigo would have cussed if he had the breath to spare for it.

Then, without warning, a hand darted out of nowhere and snagged his wrist.

"This way!"

He blinked to see a child, probably no older than twelve or thirteen, running ahead of him, pulling him along by his hand. The voice was vaguely familiar, but he couldn't place it – the boy wore a head scarf that hid his hair and the back of his head from view. From the bare feet and the simple blue yukata, it was easy to guess that this was a child from Rukongai, especially considering how easily the boy led him through the twisting alleyways of the village district.

The sounds of the shinigami in pursuit grew more and more distant as the boy wove through a maze of shortcuts and winding streets riddling the market area. By the time the buildings thinned out, there were no sign of any forces from Seireitei in the vicinity.

That didn't mean they wouldn't be combing the area, though, and he'd be damned if he got some helpless Rukongai family mixed up in this. When they stopped in front of a quaint, but run down shack, he realized the little brat had brought him home, and there was no way the shinigami would look kindly on that.

"Wait, stop. You'll get in trouble if you get caught helping me," Ichigo tried to pry his arm away, but the child's grip was like a steel vice, far stronger than he expected.

"Then don't get caught," the boy said simply, sliding the door open and pulling them both inside.

"They're pretty good at tracking people down, last time I checked."

The boy slid the door shut behind them. In that moment, something about the kid seem to change, as he lost the loose-limbed stance and stood straighter, prouder.

"That's no longer an issue. We laid a false trail leading westwards, out of Junrinan for them to follow ahead of time in case something like this happened," the boy said, his voice shifting in tone. Deeper, older, with none of the childish inflection that he had used before. Fingers tugged at the knot of the head scarf until the cloth fell away, and the boy finally turned around to meet him face to face.

Ichigo stared, his thoughts screeching to a standstill.

"Okay," he said, taking a calming breath.

"_Okay_," he repeated, not calm at all as he remembered all the crap he had gone through today, all of it centered around one death that had just now turned out to be one big mistake. He roughly yanked the boy forward by his collar, "you have five seconds to tell me what the _hell _is going on before I really get mad."

White-haired, teal-eyed, and unmistakably alive, Hitsugaya Toushiro stared back at him implacably.

"It's going take a lot longer than that, Kurosaki."

. . .

_Author's Note:_

_Thanks to Kasimir once again for an awesome job beta-reading this monster of a chapter._

_Phew. Loads of things happening, and a hell of a lot of hints dropped in between the lines. Actually, I've given away enough clues for a very careful reader to start piecing together what's really going on, so be sure to keep track of details!_

_And of course, the reveal - Shiro-chan is alive after all! Not that he was ever really in danger this early in the story, given how much I love him. What's going on? Well, a conspiracy, of course, and you have the confirmed participation of several characters (actually, several more than just the ones named, if you read carefully). __That being said, this story is going to start moving faster as plots unravel and some revelations come out into the open over the next few chapters._

_Unfortunately, I'm going out of town, so I won't have access to a computer or the internet for a while. That means there won't be a new chapter next week. Consider the length of this one my apology in advance. I should get back on January 12th, so a new chapter will be posted around then._

_Until then, Happy Holidays!_

_-The Quiller_


	5. part iv: persimmon

**_Warning:_**_ This chapter contains some graphic references to torture and a few oblique references abuse/rape. Not for those faint of heart or weak of stomach._

. . .

∙** the **∙ **color** ∙** of **∙** psychosis**∙**  
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part ( iv )

. . .

_Six Months Earlier_

The screams stopped over an hour ago. It didn't take long for fifth seat Akita Shuji to start wishing they would start again, because the silence that followed was worse. He sagged against his chains and started counting his own slow, shaky breaths to keep his mind from wandering. _One. Two. Three. Four._

He kept counting even when the cell door scraped open.

"Well, I have good news for you and I have even better news for you," his captor said, gingerly picking bits of flesh and bone out of his orange hair. "The good news is that the procedure was a success, so congratulations, no lab work for you. The even better news is that the only bits of your wife I could find after the explosion are these bits in my hair, see? I have no idea where the rest of her went, but she's gone, so you can consider yourself a free man again!"

_Five. Six. Seven. Eight._

"Oh, don't give me that look. You could have done better than her and you know it," the man chuckled, stooping down to eye level. "I'm sure you'll thank me in the long run."

_Nine. Ten._ Akita lifted his head and spat in the man's face. He forced the words through broken lips.

"I'll thank you when you die."

Instead of getting angry, however, the man looked positively delighted. His tongue darted out to lap at the trail of blood and phlegm dripping down his cheek as a thoughtful expression crept over his face. Then he smiled lopsidedly, a smile that would have been charming on his youthful, handsome features if not for the bloodstains on his teeth and the lack of focus in his pupils. Slowly, the man said, "You know, I think I actually like you. Almost enough to let you go. Of course, I can't have you tattling on me to your captain right now, so it's really a shame. I don't suppose I could convince you to join us?"

Akita let out a despairing laugh that sent pain lancing through his chest. It was ironic how his stern, impersonal captain was the one thing that still gave him hope right now. Not hope of a rescue – that would only led to despair when the rescue never showed up. And even if a rescue did come, Yukiko was dead, his zanpakuto was gone, and he wasn't sure his own sanity was intact anymore. Akita was a trained soldier; he knew how much damage an individual's psyche could endure before it was past the point of recovery. He had passed that point days ago.

He was no longer hoping for a rescue. All he wanted now was retribution.

"He'll know," Akita threatened. He looked his captor in the eye and said levelly, "Taicho will know...he'll hunt you down like the traitor you are."

The man's smile stretched wider.

"Such conviction. It touches my heart – makes me wonder what kind of man inspires such faith. Tell you what, why don't we make a bet?"

Pressing the tip of a rusty scalpel against the back of Akita's hand, the man leaned in close and said in a lover's whisper, "I'll tell you everything. What I'm planning, what I'm trying to accomplish, and even how to stop me. In exchange, I'll take an ounce of meat from you every day. I'll even let you choose which ounce. If your captain finds us before you die, you win and get to spill all my secrets."

The man drove the entire scalpel straight through the flesh of Akita's hand and twisted viciously.

"But if he doesn't, well, I suppose someone has to pay the price of our bet."

. . .

Coffee, Hitsugaya decided, existed solely to make his life more miserable. The beverage was simultaneously too disgusting to keep drinking and too downright useful to stop drinking. To make matters worse, widespread opinion dictated that only adults drank coffee, and that real men drank their coffee black. It took every ounce of self-control he had to keep choking down the bitter brew while keeping his expression neutral.

No cream, no sugar – just black sludge that tasted like it could peel the paint off his desk.

He would kill for a full eight hours of sleep right now. In hindsight, he had underestimated just how much paperwork he had been signing up for when he offered to temporarily handle the paperwork for all divisions without a captain. Back then, Hinamori had been rejecting to any attempts he made to help her, but she had also been wearing herself out trying to run the Fifth all by herself. This way, by taking temporary responsibility for all divisions that lacked a commanding officer with the authority to approve or oversee certain tasks, he could at least claim that he was acting out of duty instead of friendship no matter what Hinamori thought.

'Temporary' dragged on for years and years as no replacements were found. Now, it seemed like every piece of wayward paperwork in the entire Gotei 13 found its way to his desk. Even a prodigy could only focus for so many hours before the words started blurring together and his concentration started slipping. The feeling that he had overlooked something important or unknowingly made a mistake nagged constantly at the back of his mind.

Well, it was too late to back out now. The paperwork had to get done _somehow_, and Hitsugaya highly doubted his fellow captains were going to jump in and help. He swallowed another mouthful of coffee and refocused on the reports in front of him.

"Taicho! Did you hear, Renji's decided to take the captain's exam!" a blur of pink scarf and blonde hair burst in through his office door.

_Splotch._ The overworked Tenth Division captain took a calming breath and consciously loosened his grip on the writing brush before he snapped it.

"Of course I know. He had my recommendation," Hitsugaya replied dryly.

"And you didn't tell me?" Matsumoto pouted.

"Appeals for captainship are supposed to be confidential," he muttered as he read over the splotched report to see what could be salvaged.

"Oh, no one cares about – what are you drinking?" Matsumoto switched subjects so quickly that Hitsugaya felt the whiplash as she snatched his mug off his desk. She sounded scandalized as she asked, "Is this _coffee?_"

"Is there something wrong with drinking coffee?" Hitsugaya growled, bristling.

"You can't, Taicho! You won't grow any taller if you drink too much caffeine before you hit puberty," Matsumoto declared, already dumping the acidic sludge into the potted plant. For a ridiculous moment, he half-expected the plant to shrivel up and die. It didn't.

The vein in his forehead throbbed dangerously.

Not for the first time, Hitsugaya reminded himself that it was beneath a captain's dignity to throttle his lieutenant, no matter how frustrating said lieutenant was.

"I wouldn't have to if someone would do their job," he deadpanned, "but that's obviously not why you're here."

Matsumoto's face immediately brightened at the unspoken permission to voice her request.

"Right, I have a huge favor to ask. You know I haven't asked for a day off in ages –"

"No."

"– and I was wondering if I could have all of tomorrow off –"

"No."

"– to make a trip to my hometown. You know. Homesickness and all that."

Hitsugaya sighed.

"I'm not giving you a day off just so you can take Abarai out drinking," he said, already returning his attention to his paperwork. The report he had accidentally blotted ink on turned out to be this week's patrol reporting schedule. He'd have to go back and reread all the reports before he could rewrite the document from scratch. "If you really wanted to visit your hometown, you can go in your own spare time."

"But Taicho, it's all the way in outer Rukongai. It'll take a whole week just to get there! The next break isn't until fall, and I wanted to go see the persimmon trees in bloom," Matsumoto wheedled.

At this, Hitsugaya frowned. There were persimmon trees in Seireitei – the ones Ichimaru Gin had planted around the Third Division. Matsumoto avoided them for the same reason Hitsugaya knew his lieutenant would never really go back to visit her hometown.

Wait.

Something mentally clicked into place like a puzzle piece.

Outer Rukongai. Patrol reporting schedule.

A feeling of alarm spread through him as he finally pinned down the source of his nagging worry. Something had been missing from the hundreds of reports he read every day. Not a single one had come in from the squads patrolling the outermost districts of Rukongai. If it had been just the Tenth, he would have dismissed it since reports over long distances were often late, but he didn't remember seeing any reports from the other divisions he was currently overseeing either.

It could be a coincidence.

His gut told him it wasn't.

"Matsumoto, when was Akita's squad supposed to report in?" the Tenth Division captain asked.

Matsumoto blinked at the sudden change of topic. She pressed a finger against her lips before replying, "Four days ago. They're a little later than usual, but it's nothing to worry about yet."

Hitsugaya was already on his feet, fastening Hyorinmaru across his back and making his way to the door as he summoned a hell butterfly to convey orders to his officers to dismiss the squads without him today. Matsumoto fell in step behind him, the transformation between cheerful slacker to serious lieutenant happening in the span of a heartbeat.

"Taicho?"

"Something's wrong," Hitsugaya murmured, brow furrowing in concentration. "Akita's squad was stationed in northern Rukongai, district seventy. The last report I got from any of the outer squads around that area came in three months ago. That's too long to be just a communication delay. I might be overthinking it...but better to make a trip for nothing than run the risk of letting anything that dangerous go unchecked for however long it takes us to know for sure."

"District seventy," Matsumoto echoed. She bit her lip. "That's pretty far, Taicho."

Hitsugaya fell silent as he considered his options. 'Pretty far' was a gross understatement. It would take the thousands of continuous shunpo to cover that distance. A captain could make it. A lieutenant, however, might not. If they had to stop and travel on foot, they would be wasting days' worth of travelling time when it might already be too late.

In the end, it came down to a choice between how much he needed his lieutenant and how much the missing squads needed him.

Which was really no choice at all.

"Matsumoto, stay," he said quietly. "Alert the other captains and be ready to organize a rescue and retrieval team."

Though she hid it well, Hitsugaya still caught a flicker of hurt flash across his lieutenant's face. He knew how much she hated being left behind, just like she knew how much he hated sacrificing lives under his command.

But duty won out in the end. Matsumoto visibly swallowed her protests and gave him a grimly determined, "Yes sir." He didn't apologize. She didn't need him to. Despite all of their differences, their priorities remained the same – saving lives would always come first. So he only ever said what he needed to say, and she somehow understood everything he didn't.

And people still wondered why he refused to replace her.

"If I'm not back in a few weeks –"

"Ten days."

"Matsumoto..."

"Ten days," she repeated with steely eyes.

He sighed. "– ten days," he relented, "then do whatever you have to."

Like always, a brisk nod was the only parting Hitsugaya offered before he pushed off into a shunpo, but this time, he had the oddest feeling that he should have said goodbye.

. . .

'_I want to live,'_ Riko thought.

Something popped with a burst of pain as a particularly vicious kick connected with his shoulder. The world circled drunkenly before he rolled to a stop, and all he could taste was dirt, blood, and the loose tooth rattling inside his mouth. Every time he tried to rise, someone would stomp on his spine and send him sprawling face down on the street again. To his mortification, frustrated tears were sliding out against his will and smearing across his face.

"You. Fucking. Snitch," the biggest and meanest teenager in the group snarled, punctuating each word with a kick. Domoji was vicious, strong, and exactly the kind of youth Takuya-aniki's gang liked recruiting. "You told boss Takuya about the booze, didn't you? You're jealous that he picked me to join, so you tattled, you little whore!"

Riko hadn't breathed a word about the stolen sake, but he knew Domoji was just looking for a convenient outlet. No one would care whether a kid like him lived or died out here in district seventy.

"You know what we do to snitches around here?" Domoji threatened, placing a foot against the younger boy's throat and slowly grinding downwards with his sandal. Riko choked as he clawed at the teenager's ankle, but to no avail. He started blacking out from lack of air. Before he could, though, he heard the grind of steel on steel and knew Domoji had drawn his newly acquired katana.

'_I want to live,'_ Riko thought again, this time in panic. He knew Domoji had been dying to try out his new toy ever since he got it. The young boy flailed and writhed feebly, but the older teen just pressed down harder on his throat to pin him in place.

"Want us to hold him down for you, Domo?" one of the other boys laughed.

"Hah, look at him squirm!"

"He's trying to get away. Hey, grab his legs, will ya? Juugo, get his arms!"

Several boys, all bigger and heavier than he was, pinned Riko down to the ground before Domoji moved his foot away. Smiling horribly, the older boy said, "I'm gonna carve out your tongue and make you eat it."

The sword glinted as it rose in the air. Riko screwed his eyes shut.

'_I want to live,'_ he thought one last time the sound of falling steel whistled through the air.

The blow never landed. Amidst the cacophony of encouragement, Riko heard a different voice say "that's _enough_" as its owner deftly caught Domoji's wrist and stopped the sword mid-swing.

"Who the hell are you?" Riko heard Domoji yell.

"I should be the one asking you that," the newcomer spoke calmly, but there was a keen edge of steel in his voice. "Where is this sword's rightful owner?"

"You have a fucking death wish, don't you? Let go!"

"Its wielder," the stranger growled, "would never have allowed a coward and a bully to wield his zanpakuto. Where did you get this?"

"You must wanna die pretty bad," Domoji warned, "because you're really pissing me off!" The last few words came out in a roar as Domoji lunged forward, but instead of the sickening sound of steel meeting flesh, all Riko heard was a whoosh of air. He felt rather than saw the impact that sent Domoji smashing into the ground hard enough to raise a cloud of dust.

The sword thumped point-down into the earth ten meters away.

There was a moment of shocked silence.

Then someone shouted, "Get him!", and all hell broke loose.

Cries of pain and outrage sounded all around Riko through a storm of confused feet. He refused to look. He curled up into himself, covering his head with one arm. Above him, he could hear the other boys throwing punches, kicks, strangleholds - all of them countered with a whisper of movement and a blur of speed that far, far outclassed anything Domoji and his cronies were capable of.

Like all bullies, they were cowards at heart. They beat a hasty retreat the moment it became clear that they were outmatched, hurling empty threats and swearwords over their shoulders to preserve some measure of pride.

Soon enough, the street was peaceful again. There was a rustle of clothing as someone kneeled beside him.

"Can you stand?"

The voice was blunt and brisk like winter wind, but it wasn't a voice he recognized. Riko didn't dare to answer. No one strong enough to fight off Domoji would have saved him out of the goodness of their heart. So when gentle fingers landed on his left shoulder, he whimpered and flinched away, only for a firm hand to push down on his shoulder and keep him from moving.

"It's not broken," the voice murmured. "Just dislocated. Hold still, this will hurt."

That was the only warning Riko got before his shoulder joint was wrenched back into place with a sickening pop.

Riko cried in pain as he bolted upright, clutching at his offended arm. Rough as the treatment was though, it worked; Riko blinked away the tears of pain and got a good look at his rescuer for the first time.

And the first thing he did was to stare.

He had been expecting a grown-up. The voice had spoken in a firm and disapproving manner, like how adults talked to children. Like someone with authority. Like Takuya-aniki. Riko couldn't think of anyone else who had the strength to fight off Domoji's entire group at once.

He couldn't have been further from the truth.

At first, all he saw were impossibly green eyes, cold and bright like twin chips of ice. Then the hair, with a whiteness he had only ever seen in snow, purer and cleaner than all the muddy colors of impoverished Rukongai. It took Riko more than a few seconds to register the boyish curve of that face, the similar height, and the hands that weren't any bigger than his own. A boy. He had been saved by someone who looked as young as he did.

But not just any boy – Riko's breath caught in his throat as he saw the sword sheathed diagonally across the boy's back, displayed proudly for the world to see. And not just any sword either – the most finely-crafted katana Riko had ever seen, even nicer than the one Takuya-aniki carried. People would kill for a sword like that.

People _had_ killed for a sword like that.

What kind of person walked around with a death sentence like that strapped to his back?

"You...you're my age," he stuttered.

"I doubt it," the boy said matter-of-factly, but he showed no other visible response besides offering a hand to help Riko up. The boy's hand was rough and callused, not at all like a child's, and its grip was firmer than iron as the boy effortlessly pulled Riko back to his feet.

"You're my age," Riko repeated, before he tensed up with a horrible realization. Domoji wouldn't accept losing to a kid. "Why'd you let them run? You barely hurt them!"

"If I had, then I would be no better than they are," the boy said, giving him a carefully measuring look. It was disconcerting, how certain the boy sounded when the words coming from his mouth made no sense.

"But now they'll be back," Riko said shakily. He tried not to panic as he thought of how furious Domoji would be the next time they ran into each other. "If they're not scared of you, they'll be back. And next time, they'll bring more guys, more and more, and they won't stop until they get us."

"I see," the boy said without a hint of concern.

"You don't understand," Riko tried again. "It won't just be Domoji's friends next time. It'll be a real fight! If he can't win on his own, then he's gonna ask his gang for help, and then, then...T-Takuya-aniki will find out." His voice had unconsciously dropped to a whisper.

The name finally sparked a response. Solemn lips thinned into a deep frown.

"Takuya. The one who gave Domoji that katana?" the boy asked.

"He's the leader. Every new member gets one from him," Riko answered.

"How did Takuya get a hold of them?"

There was an edge of ice, sharp and unyielding, in those words. Riko didn't dare to refuse him an answer. "Everyone knows. Takuya-aniki…he disappears. Sometimes for a day, sometimes for a week, but he always he comes back with a sword. And then he tells stories. About the person who used to own it, about how weak they were, about how he k-killed them. He's really, really strong. No one's dares to fight him anymore. If you make him mad..."

The boy listened silently, but something dark and dangerous was beginning to form behind that tranquil teal gaze. It scared Riko, a little, because he hadn't seen anyone get angry so quietly before.

When he finished talking, the boy turned his back and walked over to where Domoji's sword was still standing point-first in the ground, tugging the blade out of the dirt.

"Where can I find Takuya?" he asked softly. His voice didn't give anything away.

But Riko recognized the look on the boy's face, the whitening of his knuckles as they tightened around the sword hilt. Riko pleaded, "You shouldn't. You should stay as far as away as you can!"

The boy's gaze lingered on the sword Domoji had left behind. "There's something I have to settle."

"He'll kill you," Riko stated, not as a threat, but as a fact. "He'll kill you, he'll take your sword, and he'll give it to someone else like Domoji...and then he'll leave you outside town to rot. You'll die." Riko lowered his face. "I don't wanna see that."

The boy only said, "I won't die." He slid Domoji's sword through his obi and started walking towards the town square. There was a straightness in his back and a sureness to his step that brought a lump to Riko's throat. His age. The boy was his age. He couldn't...he couldn't just watch this happen.

"If you don't die...you'll want to. He might, he might make you just like me instead," Riko said in his smallest voice. "I don't wanna see that either."

The boy stopped dead in his tracks.

Riko grabbed a hold of the boy's sleeve and held it tight. "Promise me you won't fight him. If Domoji tells him you helped me, and then you fight him, what's Takuya-aniki going to think?" His mouth felt dry. "Please, I don't wanna get into trouble. Promise me you won't. If not, I'll...I'll stop you!" He didn't know how he was going to beat someone who had trashed Domoji's entire gang, but if he didn't, Takuya-aniki would...would...

Surprisingly, the harsh frown on the boy's face softened and melted away. His hand closed over Riko's and gently, but firmly pried his sleeve loose.

"If you lead me to him," the boy said, "I promise I'll at least give him a chance to talk."

Riko tensed. He didn't want to visit Takuya-aniki. But if not, it would only be a matter of time before the boy ran into Takuya, or Domoji told his leader everything. This way, at least, if Riko went to Takuya first, maybe he'd at least get a chance to explain what really happened. And maybe, maybe everything would be okay. The moment the boy saw Takuya-aniki, he would understand how terrifyingly strong the man was. Everyone did. Riko felt his head bob in a stiff nod.

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Riko offered, "Takuya-aniki is usually at the izakaya along with the rest of the gang during the day. If we're lucky, sometimes they let us have their leftover food."

The boy didn't say anything else until Riko stopped outside the said building. Riko took a moment to muster his courage before sliding the door open.

The chatter inside paused for a moment as a few people turned to see who had entered. Riko fought the urge to bolt as he got on shaky knees and bowed, before scurrying inside. Before he could duck into an unnoticeable corner, however, he heard an all too familiar voice call out to him.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Riko didn't dare to breathe as he turned to meet the gaze of the dark, wiry man seated at the head of the table. "T-Takuya-aniki."

A crooked smile. "Come here, Riko. You must be hungry if you came on your own. "

"So you're Takuya," Riko heard the boy's cool, dispassionate voice from behind him.

Takuya's tunnel-like black irises flicked from Riko to the boy behind him, and the crooked smile stretched by several yellow teeth as the man made a pleased expression. "And you brought a friend. This is rare." To Riko's horror, the black-haired man stood and stalked toward them like a predator closing in on its prey. He unconsciously stumbled back a step.

The boy stood his ground.

"Truly rare," Takuya murmured as he circled between them, looking at the boy and licking his lips. "How...exquisite. You're not from these parts, are you? "

"You recognize my shihakusho," the boy said levelly.

Takuya blinked. "Shihakusho? No. Black is hardly rare. Your eyes, though, they're different. Spirited. Like there's something you still believe in. It's rather...aggravating."

The boy's mouth tightened as he drew some kind of realization from those words.

"I see. In that case, you should at least recognize this sword." The boy drew Domoji's sword from his side and, to the shock of most people watching, struck it into the ground between Takuya's feet, leaving it quivering there like a challenge.

"This sword," the boy's voice was still calm and controlled, but straining to stay that way now, "belonged to a man named Akita Shuji. I want to know why you had it."

Takuya had taken a step back from the sword and was now sizing up the boy once more, a little more wary than before. A similar flash of understanding crossed his face as his smile reappeared and turned positively nasty. "I understand now. You're one of _those,_" he laughed, closing in on the boy. "You're here for revenge."

"I'm here because it's my responsibility to be," the boy snapped.

"Call it what you want," Takuya chuckled as he leaned in close, his face inches away from the boy. One finger trailed along the boy's cheek. "I'm afraid the name means nothing to me though. I don't bother remembering all the weaklings I've killed."

Riko rubbed his bruised throat discreetly. The room felt stuffy, hard to breathe in, and it made him feel sluggish and slow. But when he looked at the boy's face, his blood ran cold, because there was no mistaking the white fury boiling underneath the calm façade. Something really, really bad was about to happen.

"So you're saying he's dead," the boy concluded flatly. "I assume the same goes for the owners of all the other swords in this room."

"Be careful," Takuya taunted, "You don't want to include your own sword in that, do you? Not that I would mind collecting it, but you've lost so much already. He was important to you, wasn't he? Are you his son? His student? Or just a sad, abandoned toy?"

Too quickly for anyone to react, the boy drew his katana with an expert's ease and leveled it with Takuya's throat.

"His _captain_," the boy answered coolly.

The entire tavern was on their feet in an instant.

And on their knees the next.

Riko choked as the temperature plummeted and blinding frost crackled across the floor. It felt like the sky had collapsed. There was an unfathomably vast, monstrous presence that filled the entire room, smothering him, crushing him, making it impossible to breathe. His legs threatened to buckle as he clutched at the wall to keep himself upright and forced himself to gasp a mouthful of freezing air.

Everyone else looked even worse off, even the most battle-scarred of Takuya's men. All of them were on the floor, desperately fighting to breathe. Only Takuya-aniki was still standing, though he had gone visibly pale.

"W-what the hell are you?" Takuya hissed. Even the effort of drawing his katana and swinging it visibly strained him, as a bead of sweat rolled down his neck despite the frigid temperature.

The boy blocked effortlessly. Eyes burning, voice steady, he said, "Hitsugaya Toushiro. Captain of the Tenth Division."

Hitsugaya's sword flashed and Takuya's blade was knocked out of his grasp, skittering along the floor.

"Akita's been a fifth seat for two decades," the boy, not at all boy-like now, continued as he stepped towards Takuya with murder in his eyes. "When we sparred, he was good enough to make me release my shikai. He wouldn't have been killed by someone like you."

Takuya drew his wakizashi. Hitsugaya batted it away before it even completely left the sheath.

"For lying in an official investigation and illegal possession of numerous zanpakuto, you are under arrest," the boy continued, unaffected.

Takuya's katana had skittered to a rest at Riko's feet. The man glanced desperately towards it now, and with a calculating look, suddenly dove towards both of them.

He never made it.

Before Riko could even process what was going on, Hitsugaya moved with inhuman speed. One moment, Takuya was lunging towards the terrified Rukongai boy. The next moment, something in the air _cracked_ as a bone-jarring impact sent Takuya smashing straight through the wall in an explosion of splinters and debris.

"Bakudo, fourth spell, _Hainawa_," Riko heard, and when his mind caught up with him, he realized he was sitting on the tavern floor with the hem of a white cloak obscuring his vision. He could see a jagged hole in the wooden wall and Takuya on the other side, groaning in pain as he strained against a glowing rope.

Hitsugaya stepped deftly over the bits of debris and glanced down at his defeated opponent with an unreadable expression. In a dangerously low tone, he said, "A captain is permitted to use any means necessary to extract information from criminals if their subordinates' lives are at stake. I'm going to ask one more time. Why do you have these zanpakuto?"

The words _'any means necessary'_ broke Takuya's resolve.

"I didn't kill them! I didn't kill any of them, I swear," Takuya confessed. "I don't know anything – I just found them lying there, and no one ever came for them, so I took them! That's all! I never saw anyone else near them; I didn't know they belonged to your men! I didn't mean to hurt anyone, I swear on my life, please believe me!"

Riko stared as the words toppled out of Takuya-aniki's mouth. So everything, everything had been a lie. All of the stories, all of the fear, everything was nothing but a cheap illusion built up on three months of bluffs and lies.

"Where did you find them?" Hitsugaya demanded.

"There – there's a ravine north of here, and a cave at the bottom. I heard, there were noises, horrible noises, but I never saw anyone go in or out. All I know is that every few days, some new swords would turn up at the entrance. I didn't...I never went inside."

There was a tense period of silence as Hitsugaya visibly tried to keep himself from cutting Takuya down then and there. Then, with a soft curse, he sheathed his sword.

The suffocating pressure lifted and the room temperature returned to normal. The shinigami captain's voice, however, sent chills running down Riko's spine. "The zanpakuto you've taken," he growled. "You will return them. Every last one." The implicit _'or else_' was clear enough without being spoken aloud.

He turned to Riko and his voice was still cold, but maybe just a little kinder.

"You have spirit energy. There's a school that teaches you how to use it. In a few days, someone will come to pick you up; it's your choice to go with them or not." No parting, no goodbye. Just like that, he was gone, leaving nothing more than a whisper of winter in the air and a trail of shattered lies in his wake.

. . .

Hitsugaya knew, from the moment he saw Akita's zanpakuto, that he was probably too late. There had been almost no spirit presence left in the blade – it was barely more than a soulless asauchi. If not for the distinctive hilt-guard, Hitsugaya wouldn't have recognized the sword at all.

Every sword that Takuya found could have been a zanpakuto. There had been at least two dozen swords in that room, many of which were impossible to distinguish between. Hitsugaya felt sick at heart. How many squads had they lost in the last three months? How had he not noticed sooner?

Three entire months.

He reached the bottom of the ravine and hurled himself straight into the cave without pausing. He could pick up faint traces of a sickening stench, not quite like a hollow's, but similar enough to set off alarm bells in his head. If the cave was really a trap, then it wouldn't do him any good to inch along cautiously. The other squads would have already done so, wary of a hollow, and it had probably gotten them killed. His best bet was to rely on speed and surprise, without giving the enemy enough time to prepare, and simply count on his own reflexes and durability to save him if the worst came to pass.

The cave was damp and drops of water echoed eerily in the darkness. He didn't let it bother him. Water was his ally.

Soon enough, there was no light at all. Hitsugaya resisted the urge to summon a light - it would only let the enemy see him before he saw them. He hurtled through pitch blackness, stretching his senses to the limit and weaving through sharp rocks and winding turns with millimeters to spare.

And all the while, the stench was only getting stronger. He recognized it now as the smell of advanced decay, when rotting corpses were kept in a warm and damp environment for far, far too long.

He was probably too late. There was probably nothing left to save.

The thought only made him push himself faster.

He was moving so quickly he almost slammed straight into the sudden dead end that loomed up ahead. Reaching out, his fingers brushed against what was unmistakably a steel door. One, no, two of them, side by side. The stench of rot was coming from both, but most strongly from the one on the right.

Rot meant bodies. Bodies meant possible survivors.

Hyorinmaru cut through steel like butter and the pieces of the door fell away.

"_Tsukero._" Light spilled from the glowing orb floating above his palm into the room ahead.

Hitsugaya choked on his next breath.

He had been expecting bodies. He had not been expecting what was left of them. Dangling from chains on the ceiling, heaped in piles against the walls, folded into grotesque positions into tiny cages. He didn't even have to check to see if any of them were alive. Some were bloated and plump with moisture while others were already shreds of flesh hanging off broken skeletons. Others were so mangled he couldn't tell what had been done to them.

The youngest captain fought the urge to retch. The urge to hide. The urge to flee.

He clamped down on his emotions with icy resolve, swallowed a breath of rotting air, and forced himself to walk into the room with his eyes open. He had to count. He had to know how many men they had lost. Had to see which ones were wearing the black uniforms of the shinigami, and if so, whether or not he could identify the body to confirm the casualties when he got back.

'_My fault,'_ he thought. _'For not realizing sooner.'_

Twenty-two bodies. Maybe more. He didn't recognize any of them – most barely even looked like bodies anymore, and he had been forced to resort to numbering off severed limbs for the more dismembered ones to figure out how many corpses were in the same pile.

Nothing left to save.

Then a flicker of spirit pressure flared from the room next door. Weak. Too weak for him to recognize. It could be a trap.

It could be a call for help.

Hitsugaya didn't even bother going back outside and hacking open the other door. Instead, he simply placed his hand against the adjoining wall and poured his spirit energy into the damp stone. Ice bloomed under his palm and the entire rock face froze, cracked, and crumbled away under his fingertips.

"_Tsukero._"

"...T-taicho."

The light in his hand nearly flickered out.

"Akita," he breathed.

He didn't know how his fifth seat was still alive. Strapped to an operating table, surrounded by dried blood, the man's body was missing chunks of flesh everywhere. Most of his legs had been scraped down to almost nothing more than grisly bones below the thighs. His left arm was completely gone, amputated at the shoulder. His eyes were empty sockets. Strips of skin had been flayed away in neat, rectangular cuts. Hitsugaya knew that a shinigami could survive injuries that would kill a normal human if their will to live was strong enough, but this went far, far beyond the limits of what a seated officer's spirit should be able to endure.

"...I figured it had to be you, Taicho," the man said, his voice strained under what had to be excruciating pain. "If anyone could find us, it'd be you."

"Don't talk," Hitsugaya ordered sharply, already sheathing Hyorinmaru and removing his captain's cloak to make a stretcher to carry the man. He couldn't even begin to heal this. "You've lost too –"

Akita winced. "Please, don't...don't tell me. I asked him to take my eyes first so I wouldn't have to see."

Hitsugaya stopped. While Unohana might be able to save his fifth seat's life, the chances of someone so seriously injured surviving the journey back to Seireitei were next to nil. And even then, the damage was too extensive. He would be a cripple for the rest of his life. And his words – 'I asked him to take my eyes _first_' – suddenly painted a horrifying picture of what had happened.

"Who did this?" Hitsugaya asked harshly.

His fifth seat didn't answer. Instead, he rasped, "I was so...so close to just...asking for something fatal. But Yuki, she wouldn't...have forgiven me...if I didn't try. I had to make _sure_ you knew, Hitsugaya-taicho. Promise me...no matter what I say, you'll hear me out."

"I promise."

"The shinigami substitute."

"Kurosaki?"

"He made...another bet with me," Akita choked, "t-that even if I told you, you wouldn't believe me."

Hitsugaya felt his heart miss a beat.

"Believe what?"

"That he's going to...wipe out the shinigami. Raise a whole army. No one's gonna see it c-coming, not unless you warn –" Akita's words were cut off by a bout of bloody coughs. The man's only remaining hand reached out feebly, blindly groping for Hitsugaya's sleeve as Akita forced the coughs to stop. The man gasped, "Please, Taicho...you have to...believe me...!"

He couldn't.

"T-taicho...please..."

Only Hyorinmaru's icy grip on his soul kept Hitsugaya's voice level as he said at last, "I believe you."

In that instant, something inside the man finally gave out.

"Thank you," Akita whispered. His entire frame trembled, and somehow, Hitsugaya knew his stubborn, dauntless fifth seat officer would be crying if he still had eyes to cry with.

His own eyes stayed dry.

"I was...afraid all of this would be for nothing. That you would never find us, that if you did, you wouldn't believe...thank god. I...it wasn't for nothing."

"You did well," Hitsugaya said softly.

He wished he could say more. But even as he searched for the right words to comfort, to soothe, to thank, the words didn't come. He had spent too many years perfecting the curt, impassive mask he wore in front of his men to earn their respect. In the end, '_you did well'_ was all he could muster.

Akita smiled anyway, despite his obvious agony.

"Then...may I...one last favor, Taicho?"

"Ask."

"I heard that...freezing to death is like falling asleep. Not…painful. Could you...?"

The grip on Hitsugaya's sleeve loosened and fell away. The man was fading.

There was nothing left to save.

Hitsugaya drew Hyorinmaru once more.

. . .

He stayed outside the cave for six days. Hidden out of sight, the Tenth Division captain barely slept more three or four hours a day, and never left to find food or water. He simply watched and waited for someone, anyone to come. By nightfall on the sixth day, he was forced to conclude that no one was coming, or even if someone did, he would be too exhausted to subdue them. He spent the seventh day carrying the bodies out of the cave, one by one, and burying them in the bottom of the ravine. For all his spiritual strength, he was too small to carry more than one at a time.

If Hitsugaya ever had to thank Aizen for anything, it would be for forcing him to realize that letting his heart rule his mind only ever ended in tears. His sharp mind was his greatest weapon; he couldn't afford to charge in without thinking.

Six days was a long time to think. Long enough for Hyorinmaru to soothe away both the roiling confusion and the blind fury. When he could think clearly again, he forced himself to swallow several painful truths.

First, that besides Akita's words, he had no proof Kurosaki was involved.

He couldn't report what his fifth seat had died to tell him. The Central 46 was too wary of Ichigo, both of his sheer power and his influence within the Gotei 13. All they needed was a good excuse to label the orange-haired substitute as a dangerous hazard, and then they would shut him away in a cell for god knows how long.

'_Please, Taicho...you have to...believe me...'_

Guilt throbbed like a barb lodged in his heart. He had to ignore it. Had to think calmly, rationally. In the end, he trusted Kurosaki. He still trusted Kurosaki. Without solid proof otherwise, Hitsugaya owed him at least the benefit of doubt.

That led to the second realization.

Whoever was behind this wanted him to find out. The steel door, the chains, the bodies, the tools – even the dumbest shinigami could take one look at the place and know it wasn't a typical hollow's work. There were a thousand different ways to hide things if they had really wanted to stay hidden: spacing out the disappearances, moving around different areas in Rukongai, or even faking hollow attacks. It only made him more certain of Kurosaki's innocence. If someone was trying to frame Ichigo, or to get him out of the way, then Hitsugaya refused to be their unwitting pawn.

The last realization was the most chilling.

The patrol schedules had been altered. There shouldn't have been so many patrols passing through the same district in such a short span of time. Even more troubling – the residents in the area had never even seen a shinigami before.

How long had someone been screwing with the patrols through this area? And more importantly, who? He knew he had personally drafted and approved some of those patrol routes. There weren't a whole lot of people who had the authority to countermand a captain's orders. Even fewer could alter them without notifying the captain in question. If someone that high up was behind this, the consequences could be very, very messy.

Hitsugaya's jaw tightened. They thought they could manipulate him. Like Aizen had. As if he was a foolish child, waiting to stumble into their traps.

Then let them underestimate him.

He wouldn't be making the same mistake twice.

. . .

At first, people didn't recognize the blood covered child passing through the immaculate streets of Seireitei. Their confusion was understandable; the Tenth Division captain rarely appeared in public without his distinctive white hair and white haori. This time, however, the white hair was so matted with blood and grime that its original color was unrecognizable and the iconic white coat had been turned into a makeshift harness for over a dozen zanpakuto. His identity only became clear when they got close enough to see his face.

The look on his face could have frozen stone.

Once word got out, the gossip mills wasted no time to start speculating. Hitsugaya stubbornly ignored the askance looks and the hushed whispers. He had bigger things to worry about. The moment he set foot in Seireitei, he could feel hidden eyes tracking his every move. Somehow, they knew he suspected something. They just didn't know how much he suspected.

He was treading dangerous ground. Someone with the power to countermand a captain's orders also had the power to make one disappear. Not without a fuss, but Hitsugaya had no illusions that his rank granted him any sort of immunity.

Matsumoto and Ukitake both greeted him at the gates of the Tenth Division.

"Taicho, what happened?" the Tenth Division lieutenant asked. Her gaze flicked from him to the swords in his arms, and recognition flashed over her face. "These are..."

"The bodies weren't in any shape to be identified," Hitsugaya deadpanned. Not that he could have carried them back if they were. He didn't even know if the swords he was carrying were former zanpakuto or plain old katana, but it was better than nothing.

"Then the patrols?" Ukitake asked, his face falling. The Thirteenth Division captain cared too much, too deeply for even the lowest ranked members of his division.

"We lost six squads," Hitsugaya answered bluntly. "Possibly more. We'll have to call in the remaining patrols and cross-check casualties before we know for sure."

The older captain concealed his grief with well-practiced composure. "Six squads," he echoed gravely, "it must have been a truly dangerous hollow."

There it was – the inevitable question implicit in Ukitake's words. For a brief moment, Hitsugaya was tempted to spill everything to the older captain, to leave the matter in more experienced and more influential hands. The man had been juggling Seireitei politics for a thousand years while he had still been a powerless kid in Rukongai.

Pride stalled him long enough for his common sense to catch up.

'_No,'_ his better judgment told him, _'You're probably being watched. You don't know enough. Wait. Watch. Plan.'_

"I never saw it," Hitsugaya said, frowning. "Whatever it was, I didn't get there soon enough to stop it."

"It's not your fault. You've already done more than anyone else could be expected to," Ukitake chided gently.

Hitsugaya ignored the comforting words. "All outer district squads need to be on high alert, to flee instead of engage. Ask the other divisions to send someone who can identify any zanpakuto belonging to their members."

Ukitake nodded solemnly, saying, "I'll send Kiyone and Sentaro along with Kuchiki. Between the three of them, they should recognize every awakened zanpakuto in our division."

Hitsugaya gave Ukitake a nod of acknowledgement before the man took his leave.

Only now did he realize how dead tired he was. Seven days of little sleep and no food, followed by thousands of shunpo while carrying a cumbersome load, was enough to eat away even a captain's stamina. Right now, all he wanted to do was go back to his quarters, wash off the blood, and sleep.

"Taicho," a female voice spoke up behind him, and only then did Hitsugaya realize he had forgotten completely about his second-in-command.

Matsumoto could read him like no one else. She was giving him a scrutinizing look now, and he knew he was too tired to fool her.

"Did something happen?" she asked.

The question was, did he want to drag her into it? If a captain was vulnerable, a lieutenant was even more so. Losing just a fifth seat had been bad enough. He didn't know what he would do if they targeted Matsumoto. Yet he had never doubted her ability to protect herself either; there was no one else he trusted to watch his back the way she did.

He had to answer. She would know if he hesitated too long.

A brief flash of a bloody hand, feebly clutching his sleeve, crossed his mind.

"No." The word was heavy, dropping from his lips like lead. "Get back to work, Matsumoto. I know you've been slacking off."

No laughter or denial. _Shit_. She knew he wasn't telling her something.

"Hai, Taicho," came the forcibly cheery reply, and Hitsugaya restrained himself from looking back as her footsteps faded behind him. She hadn't called him out on it. Somehow, that only made him feel worse. Numbly, he stepped into his private rooms and slid the door shut behind him with an ominous click.

Hyorinmaru was silent.

He had never felt more alone.

. . .

A thousand shunpo away, a dark, wiry, tunnel-eyed man smiled crookedly as he leaned against a freshly bloodstained shovel next to a small patch of upturned dirt.

"Ah, well, it was fun while it lasted," he chuckled, stabbing the shovel into the earth and stretching languidly. "Even if I lost that stupid bet."

Then his skin melted and his bones creaked, distorting, twisting, and shrinking until a brown-eyed, nervous-looking boy was standing where the man once was.

"Riko," he tried, rolling the name on his tongue. "Riiiiko. Eh, not as nice as Takuya, but I guess it'll do."

. . .

_Author's Note:_

_First off, my apologies for the huge delay in updates. I thought I would have internet where I went. It turned out we didn't even have power outlets._

_Moving on. Remember the fridge horror and angst I promised back in chapter one? Well here's where it begins. Though, for those of you feeling queasy, rest assured; most chapters won't be this anywhere near this grisly._

_Of course, you could always review and tell me if I should tone it down or amp it up._

_I can also hear screams of frustration at the sudden time-jump backwards. Heeee. I am unrepentant. To ease your fury though, I swear on my writer's soul that I tried writing all the relevant background information into the conversation between Hitsugaya to Ichigo. It turned into a giant, five-thousand word expositionary wall of text. Between this and that, I believe this is more preferable. Besides, a lot of very important plot points will be revealed, and by the time we jump back to the main timeline, you will have a much better idea about what's really going on than poor Ichigo._

_All OCs are present for purely plot-related reasons. Their mortality rate should tell you everything you need to know._

_Thanks to Kasimir for beta-ing my increasingly messy and verbose chapters!_


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